It's not the Monday after Thanksgiving, as the news stories would have you believe. It was actually this past Monday, Dec. 11 - two weeks before the big day. Online sales that day jumped 19 percent, to $661 million, from a year earlier. In recent years, retailers have advised leaving a couple of weeks to make sure everything arrives on time. But if you look at the WSJ.com chart of retail delivery dates, most of the deadlines for standard delivery are extending into next Monday or Tuesday (expedited shipping is Dec. 20 or 21). Online retailers are getting much better at shipping merchandise quickly.