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Shopping online the day after Christmas is becoming a family holiday tradition, says Nielsen//NetRatings. Overall visits to Internet shopping sites that day jumped 35 percent over last year, adding eight million more people to the virtual elbowing party.

On the first Not-Christmas-Anymore Day of the season, 28.1 million people piled into eBay, Amazon, and Wal-Mart.com to redeem gift cards, peruse after-Christmas sales for clearance candy canes. . .or to sell that stupid pink bunny suit Aunt Clara got them.

Nielsen//NetRatings says:

Online shopping has become a part of the holidays themselves, with 24 percent more unique visitors to the Index on Thanksgiving and 29 percent more on Christmas day than last year. Many people are taking advantage of their holiday time off to go online and shop while brick and mortar stores are closed, which means online shopping may soon take its place among the American holiday traditions of eating and spending time with friends and family.

The biggest single day for shopping was December 12th, with 30.4 million unique visitors. eBay was the champ that day, pulling in 12.4 million people, followed by Amazon with 6.1 million, and Wal-Mart.com with 4.0 million. But the biggest week was a bit earlier, the week ending December 3rd.

Lego, Macy's and Office Depot cleaned house this year, growing fastest year-over-year, with Web traffic increasing 120, 70, and 64 percent respectively.

Visits to shopping comparison sites peaked the week after Thankgiving, with traffic going as high as Dad's cholesterol, jumping by 75 percent from the start of the season to a total of 64 million shopping trips. Those shopping comparison numbers dropped considerably by the time Christmas Eve rolled around, down to just 46.1 million.

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Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.