Photo Courtesy of the New York Times.

Turns out the crazy hordes that flooded stores Friday did things besides trampling over teen girls and pepper spraying one another.

Somewhere in the midst of the shopper on shopper violence, some actual shopping occurred, netting a record $52.4 billion in sales over Thanksgiving weekend, a 16.4% jump from last year.

There are varying explanations for the jump in retail numbers, despite other signs of economic caution.

Margaret Taylor, vice president and senior credit officer in the corporate finance group at Moody’s Investors Service said,

“With consumers, it’s emotional, so they might feel they need Christmas this year. They could be willing to take on more credit.”

Analysts also warn that traffic to stores seemed to slow through the weekend, and that many more consumers were purchasing using credit cards, rather than with cash.

While it’s too soon to say whether this shopping (over)enthusiasm will last into the holiday season, as Bill Martin, founder of ShopperTrak notes,

“what we do know is without a strong start to the season it’s pretty hard to have a good season.”