As most people wouldn't even ship an order until the New Year now

They certainly are doing in the UK, for a friend I ordered a great specification laptop yesterday with $300 off and promised delivery on Tuesday.

Most of the UK's online shops/suppliers are open for business.

My computer I ordered was scheduled to arrive on the 24th and it was bumped to the 29th. We'll see if it gets here.

My big site either goes down a bit or stays even. If there's snow a couple of my smaller sites skyrocket over the holidays and stay high for 2-3 months.

Here's from a country that celebrates boxing day (or 'second christmas day' as we call it here, really!). 50% down today as well. Expecting things to pick up in 2009 :)

adsense has become a total waste since December.

Great holidays here. In Austria and Germany, also December 26th is a holiday.

My earnings for all christmas days in % of December average
24: 83%
25: 107%
26: 116&

So the average of 24,25,26 combined is 2% above December average

A reasonable bouce back on the 26th and today's looking good so far too.

I pity the poor shoppers in the real world. My eldest daughter had to start work at 5 am this morning until 2 pm and could not even get a park when she arrived to 400 people clamouring to get in. It was taking 1.5 hours to pay at the till!

Someone just told me that a very major UK High Street retailer's web site crashed as soon as they started their sale this morning...mad, the world's totally mad!

Just made statistics from my English sites,
here is the picture from the christmas holidays complete different

Here the % compared to the very low December average of all English sites. In () the total of all German and English pages compared with the from all December average

24: 51% English ( 83% all )
25: 86% English ( 107% all )
25: 88% English ( 116% all )

No Huskypup, the world in recession. People are wating for stuff to come cheap; typical behavior in a situation of deflation. By the way, a large percentage of 'sales' will actually be returns :)

Its the day after christmas (we celebrate a second christmas day here for those who didnt read my earlier post) and things are fairly back to normal :)

24: 51% English ( 83% all )
25: 86% English ( 107% all )
25: 88% English ( 116% all )

I am seeing the same stats.

December is low for me, my earnings get back to "normal" in mid Jan. But this year is different. I'm having normal earnings this dec, in fact I will close the month with the double I had last year. Weird...

It seems I was being punished by a links page on one of my sites. I put the rel=nofollow after reading the case of another webmaster here being "punished" for the links he had. My earnings came back to normal after 15 days, just in time for my low december to make it normal-december. Coincidence?

Don't know but the rel=nofollow stays from now on after reading the danger of direct links and the work it demands to keep checking normal links (reputation)

December 24th Christmas was a turning point after a very poor December.

December 21th was the first surprise, complete against the December trend. (A Sunday like in the good old times)

Since 25th December, all days above December average.

Since 25th December, all days above December average.

Same here, though I don't expect to see the real bump until January.

Likewise in terms of an uptick since Dec 25th in terms of CTR and EPC (eCPM), but this is a very short statistical window. Let's hope this bodes for a trend reversal back to pre-September levels -- though it is hard to see how the economy does not affect earnings directly or indirectly.

Likewise in terms of an uptick since Dec 25th in terms of CTR and EPC (eCPM), but this is a very short statistical window

Yes, very weird. Been some huge gyrations this month. If you take a few years back average, as 1000, then today the average is 100.

This month has rock'n rolled on a day to day basis between 50 and 150.

Never before since day one. Worst band previously was +/- 20%

Financially, Christmas Day was out of control. Heh!

Who am I to complain? Like many others, I'm slowly finding other viable and profitable alternatives.

[added]

When those alternatives prove a better proposition then AdSense takes a back seat.

I'm not alone with this theory.

[edited by: IanCP at 5:07 am (utc) on Dec. 30, 2008]