"Holiday sales" has an official-sounding number each January: the National Retail Federation's November-plus-December total, which reached roughly $994 billion in 2023 and topped the trillion-dollar mark in 2024, growing about 4 percent. The definition is the NRF's own: retail sales excluding automobiles, gasoline, and restaurants, seasonally unadjusted, across the November–December window. The Census Bureau, whose retail-sales data underlie the estimate, publishes no "holiday" series at all. So the figure the entire industry treats as scorecard is an industry trade group's custom cut of government data — useful, consistent, and owned by nobody official.
The Daily News 24 publishes information, not investment advice. Figures are cited datasets, not forecasts.
What is in the NRF number?
The calculation takes Census retail sales by kind of business, strips out the volatile and non-gift categories — auto dealers, gas stations, food services — and sums November and December. It includes e-commerce, groceries, and clothing, which means grocers' ordinary food sales count as "holiday" spending. That is defensible — the series measures the season's relevance to retail, not gift-giving — but it guarantees the trillion-dollar scale, and it means a strong food-inflation year lifts "holiday sales" without any change under trees. Analysts who want a purer gift proxy track categories like toys, electronics, and department stores separately.
Why November plus December?
Because the season's costs — staffing, inventory, markdowns — are incurred across both months, and because Black Friday, historically the season's fulcrum since its 1980s naming, falls in November. But spending has been spreading: October pull-forward, driven since 2020 by early promotions, and a January return-and-gift-card tail sit outside the window. The NRF acknowledges the blur with its own Cyber Monday and season-extension notes; the two-month frame survives because it is comparable across decades.
How do forecasts and results relate?
Each fall the NRF forecasts growth for the season — 2024's call was 3 to 4 percent, which the outcome met — and the January actuals are judged against it. The forecast is a trade group's consensus view, compiled with partner economists; the actuals are Census-based estimates subject to Census's own revisions. Chains' own holiday reporting, in January same-store-sales releases, rarely aligns cleanly: fiscal calendars differ, Thanksgiving-to-Christmas day counts shift the selling days year over year, and the 53-week fiscal year that recurs every five-to-six years inflates any direct comparison.
What are the alternatives?
Census's own retail-sales series lets any reader build a custom cut; Mastercard SpendingPulse publishes a holiday read built from card transactions plus estimates for cash and checks; Adobe and Salesforce track digital-only spending from their platform data. The measures disagree by a point or two of growth in most years, which is the honest error band of the enterprise — a trillion-dollar economy-wide phenomenon observed through indirect samples.
How should readers read the January number?
Check three things: the definition (the NRF's exclusions), the comparison base (revised or as-first-reported), and the inflation split — in 2021–2022 the season's dollar growth was mostly price, while unit growth told a weaker story. Nominal growth in a 2 percent-inflation era near 3 to 4 percent is real growth of 1 to 2 percent. The season is the sector's profit swing factor; the counting deserves the same care as the shopping.
For more context, read Retail Sales Fall 0.6% in July as Inflation Holds at 3.4%.
For more context, read Federal Law Sets a Five-Year Floor on Gift Card Expiration.
For more context, read E-Commerce's Share of Retail, Explained.