European Christmas shopping retail data reveal weak consumer momentum. As much of the European recovery depends on fiscal stimuli being translated into genuine consumption dynamics, the negative retail data raise doubts about the sustainability of economic recovery. The ideal policy to counter both the credit crunch and the meltdown of the financial sector, followed by a global recession, has been unclear from the very beginning. Although the problems during the credit crunch from mid-2007 to late-2008 were severe, it seemed plausible to some that the crisis would only affect the financial sector in a few countries. The main policies to tackle the problem targeted regulation, supervisory mechanisms and managing financial-sector liquidity via monetary policy tools. Hence, household behavior will determine whether the recovery is sustainable or just a short-term reaction to increased government spending. Pre-Christmas consumption, arguably the strongest consumption period in the second half of the year, is perhaps the best indicator for the sustainability of the stimulus-induced recovery. European retail data suggest that, although the first signs of recovery were visible, there was very little new growth generated until the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Although average (seasonally adjusted) quarterly growth of retail trade was well above 1% compared to before the crisis, the summer data merely brought this figure back from negative territory. It is interesting to see how the holiday shopping behavior of European consumers is being affected by the last vestiges of the crisis. Although exact data on Christmas consumption do not yet exist, there is a wide range of sentiment indicators that are strongly correlated to retail activity, and thus can be regarded as good indicators.