Maybe it’s inflation. Maybe more people made the nice list. Either way, Santa looks likely to be generous this year, even as retail sales growth continues to decelerate from the pandemic era. The National Retail Federation expects 2024 holiday spending to grow between 2.5% and 3.5% from last year.

That equates to between $979.5 billion and $989 billion in total holiday spending in November and December, compared with $955.6 billion in 2023. And it dovetails with NRF’s previous forecasts, which call for annual retail sales to be up between 2.5% and 3.5% for the year, over 2023.

That said, holiday sales growth hasn’t fallen below 3.5% since prepandemic 2018, when spending rose just 1.8% from 2017. By contrast, 2020 and 2021 saw spending surge some 9% and 12.4%, before dropping to 4.7% and 3.9% in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

Not surprisingly, online sales are still growing faster than retail sales as a whole, though that growth may be moderating after its own pandemic-related surge. NRF estimates that online and other nonstore holiday sales will increase between 8% and 9% to between $295.1 billion and $297.9 billion from $273.3 billion last year. Nonstore sales climbed 10.7% in 2023.

Thanksgiving is late this year, shrinking the holiday shopping season by six days from 2023. That doesn’t appear likely to stop Americans from spending a record amount.