The 2001 Christmas selling season was beautiful low-key.

The 2001 Christmas selling season was beautiful low-key, given the state of the economy and the American psyche following September 11 However, single in kind interesting factoid did emerge from the sea of post-mortem analyses. While overall retail sales were dead compared with last Christmas, Web shopping was up 37 percent to $63 billion, compared with Christmas 2000 sales of $46 billion, according to BizRate.com, a beholds Angeles-based marketing firm. While many of those silly dot-com companies have faded away, mainstream retailers are now largely exploiting the advantages of the Internet to drive