My wife maintains that the holiday shopping season begins earlier every year. What once was a day-after-Thanksgiving affair is now a post-Halloween happening.

Which brings us to gift cards. It’s not too early to consider their fate for 2009. Yesterday, Auriemma Consulting Group released results of a research effort related to gift cards and found that their appeal should brighten in 2009 — but just a bit.

Essentially, most of the year-over-year numbers from Auriemma’s research are the same. About an equal number of people this year compared to 2007 — the last year Auriemma did the study — expect to receive a gift card as a present. Similarly, the number of consumers buying gift cards in general matches 2007 results.

However, the “interest/intent to buy general-purpose gift cards” is higher this year than in 2007, and this number has been climbing since 2005. In 2005, 21% of consumers had this “interest/intent”; in 2007 26%. But this year, that percentage has reached 30%.

How this translates into actual sales is unclear to me. Certainly, more “interest/intent” implies higher sales, but you never know.