Holiday Sales; Blowout or Blowoff?

From the always reliable USA Today:

Despite thousands of store closings this year, Americans supplied a final flurry of spending to give retailers their best holiday season sales since 2011, figures released Tuesday show.
U.S. year-end holiday retail sales rose 4.9% compared to the same period last year, a welcome gift to U.S. retailers amid new signs of consumer confidence.

File photo shows last-minute Christmas shoppers at The Grove, a retail shopping complex in Los Angeles on Sunday, Dec. 24, 2017.

Richard Vogel, AP

Online retail shopping similarly increased 18.1%, while overall consumer buying during the holiday period set a record for dollars spent, according to the sales report issued by Mastercard SpendingPulse.
"Overall, this year was a big win for retail," Sarah Quinlan, senior vice president of Market Insights, Mastercard, said in a statement issued with the report. "The strong U.S. economy was a contributing factor, but we also have to recognize that retailers who tried new strategies to engage holiday shoppers were the beneficiaries of this sales increase."
Although the report showed the 2017 holiday shopping season from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24 was a winner for all retailers, the results differed by category. Retailers that succeeded tapped into:

• Home goods. There was no place like home for the holidays for many shoppers, who sent sales of electronics and appliances up 7.5%, the strongest growth of the last 10 year. Sales of home furniture and furnishings separately grew 5.1%.
• Heavy early-season promotions. They worked, with the first three weeks of November delivering significant sales increases.
• Last-minute shopping. The spending spree lasted late into the holiday season, making last Saturday second only to the post-Thanksgiving Black Friday in terms of single-day spending. Jewelry sales rose 5.9%, largely driven by last-minute sales.

The findings were based on aggregate sales activity in the Mastercard payments network, along with survey based-estimates for other forms of payment, including cash and checks, Mastercard said. The data exclude auto sales.

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 As sm-refugee asked in the previous comments.  Are the sales figures fake news or the just released consumer confidence numbers a big lie? 

The headline index fell to 122.1, making for a much steeper drop than economists had forecast. They were expecting a fall to 128.0 from November's 128.6, according to Bloomberg.
Consumers were more positive about present conditions but were mixed on the state of the labor market.
The percentage of those who said business conditions were "good" increased to 35.2% from 35%, while those saying business conditions were "bad" slipped to 12.1% from 12.3%.
People claiming jobs were "plentiful" fell to 35.7% from 37.5%, while those claiming jobs were "hard to get" hit a 16-year low of 15.2%, down from 16.8%.
"Consumer confidence retreated in December after reaching a 17-year high in November," said Lynn Franco, the director of economic indicators at The Conference Board. "The decline in confidence was fueled by a somewhat less optimistic outlook for business and job prospects in the coming months. Consumers' assessment of current conditions, however, improved moderately.

 My take is a little of both and a helping of tax uncertainty. 
• Sales; I think it likely the surveys are capturing more than ever with big data.  I also think people are spending bigger when it means smarter.  In the great Recession you didn't buy 6 months of toilet paper ar Costco even if it was by far the best deal.  
• Confidence; Last month was a big number.  a drop is expected.  It dropped a bit more than that but nothing near a trend break. 
• Taxes; No doubt many of the surveys were in the middle of the tax debate.  Uncertainty yields caution. 

What does everyone else think?