WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. retail sales fell in December, posting the biggest drop since September 2009 and delivering more evidence that last year's holiday sales fizzled unexpectedly. Even e-commerce suffered a big setback.

The Commerce Department said Thursday that December retail sales fell 1.2 percent from November. They were up 2.3 percent from December 2017. Total retail sales for 2018 rose 5 percent from the previous year.

Excluding gasoline station sales, which swing widely as pump prices rise and fall, retail sales dropped 0.9 percent in December.

The discouraging December report raises concern about whether the retail sales slowdown was just a blip or points to a more sustainable weakness in consumer spending.

"We caution against excessive pessimism," the economists at Oxford Economics wrote in a report. Falling gasoline prices and a stock market rebound since Christmas should "strengthen sales in the coming months."

The stock market recorded big drops in December. And a partial shutdown of the federal government began Dec. 22 at the end of the holiday shopping season.

"The shutdown came late in the month and likely had little impact on December sales, but consumer sentiment was weaker in the month amid stock market volatility," analysts at Contingent Macro Research wrote in a research report.

Non-store retailers, which include mail-order and e-commerce vendors, saw sales tumble 3.9 percent. That's the most since November 2008 in the midst of the Great Recession.

The National Retail Federation, the nation's largest retail trade group, said earlier this month that annual retail sales should grow between 3.8 percent and 4.4 percent, to more than $3.8 trillion this year as employers continue to hire and the economy hums along.

But it did acknowledge that the ongoing trade war with China and volatile global markets are a threat to the growthd. The group is expected to come out with final holiday results for the combined November and December sales on Thursday. It had forecast holiday sales to increase anywhere from 4.3 percent to 4.8 percent compared to the holiday season of 2017.