We won't know until the end of this week how well the Christmas retailing season has shaken out - officially, it runs till New Year's Eve. Even if it had ended at Christmas, it would be difficult to know where we stood, since Christmas Eve tends to be one of the biggest shopping days of the season. Some sellers call Christmas Eve "Father's Day," since so many laggard dads and husbands wait till then to head out to the stores.
The National Retail Federation has estimated that, when all the figures are in, Christmas spending will reach $451.5 billion this year. That would be the second-highest on record, after the $452.8 billion we spent in 2007. If they've undershot that even a little bit, we'll have a new record.
One number that is in already is the online retail sales figure, which is - not surprisingly - a record. Shoppers spent $36.4 billion by the end of last week, which was a whopping 15.4 percent increase over last year. But given that more and more people are shopping online every year, it would have been a terrible sign if we hadn't set that record.
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