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The first official holiday retail weekend closes with Cyber Monday, a day that didn't exist before online stores.

Some argue that it's a recent tradition whose days are numbered, but Apple Inc. and major retailers are doing their part to keep it alive with special deals.

Cyber Monday was born back when not many Americans had high-speed Internet access at home and large numbers of them logged in for their online holiday shopping at the office on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

But an estimated 60 percent of U.S. homes now have broadband access to the Web, according to research firm Strategy Analytics, meaning fewer have to do their online shopping at work.

And a report from Neilsen earlier this month showed the number of people in the U.S. who plan to shop online has dropped this year to 63 percent, down 10 points from two years ago. The number of people who said they will do no online shopping rose to 7 percent from 1 percent in that same time frame.

But retailers are still offering special online deals Monday, including an offer from Cupertino-based Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) of free shipping on any item purchased for more than $50.

Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ) is offering steep discounts on some PCs as well as free shipping on orders that cost more than $59.99. HP, however, didn't actually wait to launch its Cyber Monday specials on the first day of the work week, launching its specials on Sunday and making them good until Wednesday.

Other major online retailers offering Cyber Monday specials are Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), Best Buy and Wal-Mart.

The National Retail Federation has launched a Web site that aggregates all of the special offers in one place in an effort to promote the unofficial shopping holiday. It can be accessed here.

While the NRF says the number of shoppers who say they will buy something online at work this season has dropped (68.8 million in 2009 vs. 72.8 million in 2008), the number of retailers making Cyber Monday promotions has gone up (87.7 percent this year vs. 83.7 percent last year.).

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