More charts. Sorry about that. But it turns out that retail sales during the holiday season really sucked:
![](https://preprod.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/blog_retail_sales_december_20181.gif)
Retail sales were up a paltry 0.3 percent from 2017 and were down a stunning 1.2 percent from November. That’s really bad. At the same time, the trendline looks OK, which makes December look a lot like a weird one-month spike. So this might mean nothing. Maybe.