Black Friday Shopping, Photo: Robyn Beck, Getty Images

For some reason, millions of Americans love the idea of standing in long lines and battling crowded aisles to do their Christmas shopping at what would appear to be the most inconvenient time imaginable.

Here's the thing, if you wanna be a part of the busiest shopping day of the year, you've got to know when it is. So, savvy shoppers, what day is it?

HINT: it's not Black Friday. Yeah, that's right, I said it. Despite the fact that the media repeatedly refers to Black Friday as "the busiest shopping day of the year," historically, that hasn't been the case.

In fact, in the years between 1993-2001, Black Friday was usually somewhere between the 5th and 10th busiest shopping day of the year (in terms of sales and customer traffic). Recently, Black Friday has made a push towards the top, reaching the top spot in 2003 and 2005.

Aside from those two aberrations, the busiest shopping day has been the last Saturday before Christmas time and time again. In summation, if you want maximum shopping competition, this year's big game is on December 19th.