As we wrote last week, Cyber Monday is a very accurate predictor of what the online holiday shopping season will look like. Many feared that the economic downturn this year would lead to a very modest online recession, or at the very least, a significant slowing in growth.

There was some slowing, but it wasn’t much: Cyber Monday was 15% bigger than last year, which isn’t bad at all. It represented the second biggest online shopping day in history, with nearly $850 million spent.

It’s not all rosy, however: holiday spending before the Thanksgiving weekend was stagnant compared to last year, suggesting that shoppers weren’t looking to spend any money until the reality of the season bore down upon them. It is somewhat mysterious that online spending only decided to go up in relation to last year in the last week or so, but this is the true beginning of the holiday shopping season.

One of my theories is that online shopping would weather a recession well because consumers were more likely to look for bargains online, and do their research before purchasing something. This may be true, but with gas prices approaching levels not seen in ages, there is more cash on hand to use going to stores. I don’t know what the psychology of dirt-cheap gas and shopping is, but the relationship should be looked at. comScore reports shoppers did seem to think there were a lot more bargains out than last year’s Black Friday.

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