University Park Mall packed with shoppers after Christmas

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Friday is the first day of Kwanzaa and the day after Christmas, and many are choosing to spend the day at the stores.

Whether people are using the gift cards they received, or returning items they don't want, plenty of places are packed.

That includes University Park mall in Mishawaka.

It wasn't nearly as busy as it was earlier in the week, but it's safe to say there were plenty of people spending the day at the mall.

Some came to make returns, some came for the deals, and some came to play cornhole.

But regardless of the reason for their visit, thousands of people flooded into the University Park mall Friday.

"Just felt like it was a good day, didn't want to waste too much time getting it done, there's a time limit on the return policy so I wanted to make sure we were ahead of schedule on that, and it's early in the morning so I wanted to beat the foot traffic here in the mall, figured it might get busy later on," said Richard Landells of Mishawaka.

For most people who spoke with ABC57, getting their item returns out of the way quickly was their motivation for coming in.

"Today is the only day that we had available, we have a wedding tomorrow, and then we leave town for a while so wanted to get in, get the exchanges, get the kids things that they wanted and be done," said Erin Wright of St. Joseph Michigan.

Other mall shoppers told ABC57 that they were going to wait to do their returns until the weekend or next week but felt it necessary to pounce on the opportunity of a rare weekday off work.

"Something to do, just want to go out and get it over with anyways, we have the day off, might as well take advantage of it," said Diann Allred of Niles.

"I hate doing returns, I just feel like it's rude so I figured today, everyone would be doing returns, I would just kind of fit in," said Alexis McNeely of Elkhart.

One mall employee we spoke with says he believes a big part of why things were so busy today is Christmas Day falling on a Thursday, and many people still being off work Friday.