It was clearly a stormingly good Christmas for the sector, in most cases more than making up for last year’s losses.

With the bulk of festive trading updates out of the way, we can now relax in the knowledge that the doom-laden predictions were wrong.

That doesn’t mean the caution many are urging for 2010 can be ignored, or that an equally strong January performance is likely - the snow will have seen to that. But even putting aside weak comparatives, the VAT rise and everyone’s use of different periods and definitions of like for like, it was clearly a stormingly good Christmas for the sector, in most cases more than making up for last year’s losses.

So what have we learnt so far?

  • UK shoppers might know there’s a recession going on, but those in work still aren’t feeling worse off

  • A bit of snow is good news for clothing and footwear retailers - but probably a bit less than we’ve had

  • In non-food, brands mean business, and the success of branded fashion retailers and department stores like John Lewis and House of Fraser show today’s shopper is more brand focused than ever

  • If you send people money they’ll spend it with you. Tesco’s investment in its Clubcard may have directly added 0.7% to its like-for-like figure, but the money spent by the same shoppers while in-store will have added a lot more. Loyalty schemes are looking ever more compelling
  • M&S’s return to growth after two years was worth a very small celebration, but is being put into context by the performance of its rivals. It is being attacked from all sides, and Marc Bolland’s in-tray is going to be bulging

  • Game, a star performer of the past three Christmases, looks increasingly like the one-trick pony it worked so hard to tell the City it wasn’t

  • Never believe anyone who tells you it will be the worst Christmas since dinosaurs walked the earth

A chilling thought

Everyone’s thoroughly sick of the cold snap by now but probably no one more so than senior executives at the big retailers. While convenience stores in particular have been packed to the rafters, keeping the shelves filled has proved a big and expensive headache for the grocers.

But while the supermarkets will have been grappling with massive logistical challenges, for retailers selling anything discretionary the cold snap is proving a disaster, as this week’s sales tracker shows (p8). Last year may have ended on a high, but the weather means the start to 2010 is going to be a shocker.

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