Holiday Shopping Season, 2011 | featured news

Retail sales barely rose in December, but the gain was enough to lift sales to a record level for 2011. It marked the largest annual increase in more than a decade. Sales inched up 0.1 percent in December to a seasonally adjusted $400.6 billion, The Commerce Department said Thursday. It was the second straight month that sales have topped $400 billion. Never before had monthly sales reached that level.

The final weeks of 2011 were the economy's strongest since it appeared to be slipping toward recession in late spring.

When top retailers post their December sales this week, Wall Street analysts are expecting them to report a healthy end to the holiday season, helped by discounts, improved consumer sentiment and tactics like extended hours and layaways.

Big chains report an 8.9% increase from a year earlier, led by discounters and apparel stores. A later Easter is considered only partly responsible for the big jump.

Nintendo said it will launch its 3-D hand-held videogame system in February, damping speculation that it would launch the product in time for the year-end holiday shopping season.