Here's What You Spent on This Holiday Season

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Perhaps just as interesting as how much you spent on holiday shopping is how you spent it. Far fewer people shopped in stores than ever before during the five-day holiday shopping bonanza that spans Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday. For the first time, online traffic from mobile devices outpaced traditional desktop computers on Thanksgiving Day. (When it comes to mobile sales, tablets are king, driving 36% more sales than smartphones.)

From bizarre gift categories to eBay's most popular zip code, read on for a surprising snapshot of what you bought and where you spent it, based on the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday stats.

1. $243 on Home Goods

From accent pillows to cutlery, home goods were high on holiday shopping lists nationwide. Year-over-year online sales for home goods spiked 7% on Black Friday and 12% on Cyber Monday. All told, the average order total on these two days came in at $243.

2. $180,000 on Boxes of Poop (No, Really)

More than 30,000 people unwittingly purchased a box of poop on Black Friday. Or, more precisely, a box of pasteurized bull feces from a cattle ranch in Texas. Huh?

Cards Against Humanity, the company that makes the eponymous fill-in-the-blank adult card game, added a new item to its website on Black Friday: "Bullshit" priced at $6. And hoards of people bought it, not realizing that its billing on the website was actually quite literal.

Cards Against Humanity made 20 cents on each $6 box of excrement, according to Time magazine. But the company won't actually profit on this strange and stinky stunt. The $36,000 will be donated to Heifer International, a charity that gifts livestock to impoverished people with the goal of fending off hunger while also providing a source of financial stability.

3. $145 on Department Store Goods

Kohl's, the Wisconsin-based department store with nearly 1,200 locations in 49 states, cashed in on Black Friday big time, earning the most mentions of any other retailer on Twitter and Facebook. That's the good news for traditional brick and mortar department stores. The bad news is that the runners up were Apple, Samsung, Amazon, and Microsoft, indicating a huge national preference for online shopping and the gadgets that make it all possible. Perhaps that's why the average online order value for department store goods on Black Friday and Cyber Monday came in at a cool $145. That's a year-over-year decrease of 3% on Black Friday and 10% on Cyber Monday.

4. $108 on Apparel

Nearly 80% of Americans planned on making clothing purchases in the weeks leading up to Christmas, according to a recent Gallup poll. Nonetheless, the year-over-year average order value for apparel dropped 7% on Black Friday and 2% on Cyber Monday, lowering the average order amount to $108.

5. 2.5 Million eBay Purchases

Sales at online retailer eBay climbed an astounding 19% on Cyber Monday. All told, there were more than 2.5 million transactions on the online auction site on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the company reports. Interestingly, Prairie Grove, Arkansas, with a population of just 2,540, bought more items on eBay on Cyber Monday than any other zip code in the U.S. Trailing behind Prairie Grove were Miami, Florida, Alpharetta, Georgia, and Santa Clara, California.

6. $65 on Health and Beauty

The average online order value for a health and beauty purchases on Black Friday and Cyber Monday peaked at $65, marking a 10% increase over last year's numbers for Black Friday and a 4% spike for Cyber Monday.

If your credit card's still smoking from all those swipes, be consoled: Holiday gift-giving is remarkably rewarding, often providing us with a warm and fuzzy feeling that not even a high credit card balance can ward off.

How much did you spend this holiday season?

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Guest's picture
Michelle

While I agree that giving has its rewards...going into debt is not a wise option. Since the name of this blog is Wisebread, I am disappointed with the last sentence of this article. :(