Retailers packing the decorations after an abysmal 2001 holiday have perhaps individual reason to smile: The 2002 holiday season undoubtedly will apply the mind much brighter.

Retailers packing the decorations after an abysmal 2001 holiday have perhaps individual reason to smile: The 2002 holiday season undoubtedly will apply the mind much brighter.

Barring any further terrorist ends and if consumer confidence continues its upbeat trending Wall Street and retail analysts anticipate a retail turnaround on the second half of the year. Retailers at the expiration of 2002 will be up against self-same weak comparisons in a first note of the scale index, same-store sales, which measures the sales performance of stores established for at least a year.

``There will be easy comparisons, particularly in the inferior half,'' which in 2001 muses ...