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This page was last updated on March 29, 2003
Christmas 2002 is over and as a shopping season, it was one of the worst in America in many years. Most Americans are worried about the economy so they have been careful about shopping.
However, here are some interesting statistics about Christmas 2002.
Americans bought about $500 million ($500,000,000, or about 60,000,000,000 yen) worth of Christmas trees. It is the custom to buy a tree, bring it into the house, and decorate it.
The State of Oregon was the top producer of trees. We also have many Christmas tree farms in California.
The U.S. imported almost $850 million ($850,000,000, or 10,200,000,000 yen) worth of Christmas ornaments (decorations) from China. Also, China produced almost $100 million ($100,000,000, or 12,000,000,000 yen) worth of artificial (fake) christmas trees.
The Christmas shopping season is the most important season for American retailers. American department stores sold $33.9 billion ($39,000,000,000, or 4,680,000,000,000 yen) worth of products during the Christmas season. And about $12 billion ($12,000,000,000, or 1,440,000,000,000 yen) was spent on internet and mail-order (catalog)shopping.
For our New Year celebration, most Americans will go to a party on New Year's eve, which is the night before, until midnight and celebrate the changing of the year. Then the next day, they will watch American football games (college championship games.)
We also make a New Year's "resolution". This is our promise to ourselves to do something different this new year, to improve ourselves. Usually,we make a New Year's resolution to lose weight, eat better food, or improve ourselves in some way. Perhaps a good one would be to study more English (or Japanese).