Apparel retailers blamed warm November weather for lackluster sales, saying it kept customers from buying sweaters and scarves, but they won’t have that excuse in December.

In fact, the weather is expected to be just cold enough to prompt sweater purchases, but not so frigid that shoppers will avoid their holiday shopping.

According to Weather Trends International, which forecasts temperatures and conditions for U.S. retailers, December is expected to bring average temperatures of about 35 degrees, cold enough to prompt those sweater sales, and mostly free of blizzards — which keep shoppers home.

“It’s going to be a milder December,” said Weather Trends Chief Executive Bill Kirk. “Not too hot, not too cold. Last year we had really cold weather and blizzards that killed store traffic. It’s all about store traffic.”

But beware of a Christmas weekend storm which will snarl traffic and keep consumers by their fireplaces, he said.

“Later December, around the 24th, the bottom may fall out,” Kirk said. “We’re advising clients to not expect that last week of December to be great (for sales).”

He said the last month of 2005 was notable for clear skies, allowing shoppers to run out to exchange items and use their gift cards. This year, it’s likely to be a different.

“We have the whole country pretty much in a deep freeze by late December through mid-January,” he said.

So, hang in there. This is coming. 

The holiday season is off and running, with a busy “Black Friday”.

And while TMX Elmo may be in hot demand so far, that doesn’t mean Stacey Daprato, a former teacher and New Jersey mom, is going to hold on to hers.

After seeing her 2-year-old son ignore the giggling, squirming Muppet at playgroups, she’s decided to sell the one she’d bought him for Christmas on eBay.

“He didn’t seem too impressed,” she said.

So what did her son, Mattie, and his friends gravitate to instead? An anecdotal survey of two kids’ play groups in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey found that toddlers ignored many of the season’s hottest electronic gifts in favor of more tangible items the children could grasp and feel in creative control of.

That could spell trouble for this season’s must have gifts like the Little Mommy Toddler animated doll, the Itsy Bitsy Interactive Spider-Man plush figure and TMX Elmo.

Instead of the one-button interaction of this season’s most heavily promoted electronic gizmos, they flocked to a Little Tykes stand-up kitchen with a sink for stacking plastic dishes. They also grabbed up crayons, squished Play-Doh and rocked fanatically on a wooden rocking horse. Maybe the world isn’t as electronic and virtual as some marketers would have you believe.

Indeed, most of the children, who ranged in age from 20 months to 2-1/2 years old, gravitated to toys that left the most up to the imagination. One of the most fought-over items?

No surprise, really. A cardboard box the toddlers took turns putting on their head.