America’s Christmas shopping spree

The queue for the Fifth Avenue Lego store snaked around the block one lunchtime this week, as New Yorkers and tourists jostled to pluck last-minute Christmas presents from shelves in the shadow of a plastic-brick model of the nearby Rockefeller Center.

The prime Manhattan shopping district is crowded again after two pandemic holiday seasons marked by health fears and supply shortages. At the end of a year in which the US has seen its highest inflation rates for four decades, the resilience of consumer spending has been one of the year’s economic surprises.