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The Week in Shopping: A Totally Unscientific, Still Telling Holiday Retail Survey

According to early indicators, spending and foot traffic are both up in the post-Thanksgiving holiday crush—but that can mean different things to different retailers.

christmas shopping
Getting down to business, there were almost 203 million shoppers over the Thanksgiving weekend, up 3 percent from last year, according to the National Retail Federation. Photo: Jenny Evans/Getty Images
Sarah Shapiro
December 5, 2025

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Now that we’ve entered the Super Bowl season for shopping, let’s take a completely unscientific, somewhat random stroll through the retail landscape to find out what’s selling and who’s buying. For starters, how did things really go over the first Black Friday-to-Cyber Monday held under the influence of the second Trump administration and a robust but possibly overvalued market? If we go by the one-and-a-half-hour wait to enter the parking lot at the upscale Livermore Outlets mall outside San Francisco—just to drop off shoppers—Christmas might be Grinch-free this year.