Christmas, Retail | featured news

Add seven swans, six geese and five golden rings to the list of Christmas gifts that cost more than they did a year ago.

A mall trade group says that last minute shoppers gave merchants a solid lift during the final week before Christmas. Sales at stores opened at least a year rose 0.9 percent for the week ended Saturday compared with the previous week and was up 4.5 percent compared with the same period a year ago, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers-Goldman Sachs Weekly Chain Store Sales Index, released Wednesday.

Retailers saw their fair share of last-minute shoppers on Saturday, the day before Christmas, but stores were not super-busy, putting a moderate cap on pre-holiday season that started with a bang and has waned ever since.

In an unexpected twist, TVs are topping many Christmas shopping lists this year. Wal-Mart says TVs are among the top gifts people are putting on layaway at its 3,000-plus U.S. stores during the holiday season. The Westinghouse 46-inch LCD HDTV that was on sale for half off at Target for $298 was a top seller during the start to the season last weekend. And Abt Electronics already has sold out of 55-inch Samsung LED TVs that were marked down by half to $1,099.

Amazon's Kindle Fire is a Catch-22 for retailers: The $199 tablet computer could both help Christmas traffic and hurt future sales.

Snowstorms have deterred shoppers at after Christmas sales in America's northeast, while retailers in the rest of the country are anticipating the highest sales in three years.

More last-minute shoppers flocked to stores this year on the final Saturday before Christmas than last year, but spending is expected to be even higher late this week.

Retailers should see their best Christmas sales in four years as consumers now show some inclination to spend money despite a minimal recovery in the economy, according to series of recent forecasts.

Last month, Amazon’s Kindle broke sales records as it was once again a hot item to give this holiday season. When countless people turned on their new Christmas Kindles for the first time yesterday, what do you think was the first thing that they did? That’s right: they bought ebooks to fill up their Kindle hard drives. A lot of them.

Wall Street shares were slightly lower as investors tried to assess the fallout from Dubai’s debt crisis as well as retail sales from the kickoff of the Christmas shopping season.