Bling for the win.

The retail world is in the midst of its harvest season. Right now, the run up to Christmas is followed by the Boxing Day crush that often determines just how the year’s bottom line is going to end up.

But there are signs that buying patterns are shifting a bit. It turns out that Black Friday, the day after US Thanksgiving, is now the juggernaut of the retail world pushing Boxing Day into second place.

We don’t have any numbers yet on how Canadian consumers conducted themselves this year and there are fears that COVID may have put a damper on things or push buyers online But figures from the US and Mastercard in particular show retail spending down there is rising, and Christmas did deliver a solid performance.

Yes, the Thanksgiving weekend that’s Black Friday to Cyber Monday did top the sales rates so much so that it pushed over all sales higher

And the big winners were jewelry that went up 32%, and clothing increased by nearly 50% in the period running from November 1 to Christmas Eve.