Christmas Tree Sales

The article suggests that Christmas Tree sales are a good predictor of the strength of the upcoming holiday shopping season. And if that's the case there will be a minimal increase this year. This suggested increase would be a definite step up from last year's holiday shopping season, which had the steepest drop in holiday shopping since the 1930s. This year has been much better than the year before, in which the sales of Christmas trees fell 10%. Customers have been gravitating towards shorter, less pricey trees and the price of trees has been on a steady decline falling to $36.50 in 2008. Fake tree sales did worse, with 1/3 less in sales from the prior year's sales.