Holiday Spending To Exceed $1 Trillion — And 11 Other Surprising Data Points Of Christmas

I scoured holiday survey results from six sources and plucked 12 noteworthy numbers  (some that contradict others) that could define this holiday season.

$1 trillion: The total expected holiday sales this year are actually expected to exceed $1 trillion. That represents a 3.6% to 4% increase over 2015. (Deloitte, “2016 Holiday Survey”)

13%: The percentage of last-minute shoppers who plan to buy their gifts at supermarkets or grocery stores. (National Retail Federation, “Holiday 2016: Consumer Survey Highlights”)

$419: The average amount U.S. adults plan to spend on holiday-related items this holiday season. (International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), “The 2016 ICSC Super Saturday study”)

8%: The expected increase in holiday spending among Americans in 2016, compared with 2015. (“American Express Spending & Saving Tracker”)

$244: The average total cash contribution by surveyed consumers who are donating cash to charitable causes this year. (PricewaterhouseCoopers, “2016 Holiday Outlook: It’s the Most Digital Time of the Year”)

Does America Still Believe in the Right to Be Wrong?

The whole idea of a free society is based on a very simple idea that is very hard to live by: People have the right to be wrong.

.. In the “modern” era, its status as one of the defining ideas of Western civilization can be traced to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. After a century of bloody religious wars between Catholics and Protestants — with Jews often getting caught in the crossfire — the exhausted rulers of Europe reluctantly agreed to a fragile truce. While every nation would still officially follow the faith of the ruler, it was understood that religious minorities would be afforded some tolerance.

.. Cromwell’s Puritan-dominated parliament declared a real “war on Christmas,” banning celebration of the holiday. The Colonial city of Boston followed a similar practice, imposing a fine on anyone who celebrated Christmas.

.. If he thought he could get away with it, he would have made mandatory compliance with his faith the law of the land. But Cromwell recognized that he had to compromise with reality if he was going to end the religious conflicts plaguing his country.

.. The religious conflicts of the past were ultimately about which values, rituals, customs, and ideas should be imposed on everybody.

.. We are a long way off from putting beliefs of the mind to the judgment of the sword, but that is the logical destination of the path we are on, because we have lost faith in the utility of upholding the right to be wrong.

Christmas Eve: Silent Night

I don’t suspect that anything about Bethlehem that night was actually silent: people teeming and bustling along as they search for accommodations or catching up with old family friends as they wait to be registered; animals bleating and braying.

.. I’d like to think that God breaking into the world would be noticeable, that it would be obvious. Surely God-loving people can’t miss God breaking into our midst, right? And yet here God enters with the glorious cry of a newborn baby, requiring bouncing and burping, feeding and cleaning