The New Year brought cheers at John Lewis which reported a significant rise in its takings during the Christmas week.

The department store chain received good response for its clearance sale by attracting a large number of bargain hunters. It registered an increase of 1.2% over last year in store and online sales for the week ending December 27. Record first day sales of £21.4m, up 7% compared with same day last year, boosted the chain’s performance.

John Lewis reported a whopping 40.6% rise in sales to £111.3m at Waitrose.

The surge in department store business was witnessed after the dismal performance of double-digit slump in sales during November 2008.

It registered rise of 25% in sales of consumer electronics in the last week of trading before Christmas and sold twice as many number of large televisions that it sold in 2007

According to retail operations director Patrick Lewis, the real buzz in stores in Scotland, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen during Christmas week led to sizeable growth in sales while Peter Jones and Oxford Street in London also registered sizeable increase.

Trading figures from Marks & Spencer, Debenhams and Next are expected in next week. M&S has discounted some products by 50% after Boxing Day.

According to Nick Bubb at Pali International, M&S is likely to report 7% fall in comparable food sales in 3rd quarter and 10% in general merchandise like-for-like sales.