Monday was expected to be the busiest day of the year for the U.S. Postal Service and for shipping companies like FedEx (FDX). In fact, FedEx predicted that Monday would be its busiest day in history, with trucks handling more than 13 million packages. By comparison, FedEx shipped 12 million packages on its busiest day in 2008.

My read on the FedEx proclamation is that it certainly bodes well for the company in its upcoming fiscal third quarter. It also bodes well for companies like Amazon.com (AMZN), which use FedEx and rival shipper United Parcel Service (UPS) to send out the products consumers are shopping for this holiday season.

Uptick in Holiday Spending Leads to a Blowout Win for Amazon

The FedEx news is just the latest in a slew of positives for the company in December. Last week, FedEx announced that its fiscal 2010 second-quarter earnings will come in at $1.10 per share, significantly higher than its prior guidance of between 65 cents and 95 cents. The upward revision for fiscal Q2 prompted UBS analyst Rick Paterson to raise his company's one-year price target on the shares from $91 to $99. 

We'll find out just how well FedEx actually did in fiscal Q2 when the company reports results after the closing bell on Thursday. I suspect those numbers will be strong and likely much better than the consensus forecast for earnings of $1.05 per share.

But rather than buying FedEx shares this season, I am more inclined to buy shares in their aforementioned customer, Amazon.

According to the latest consumer spending survey from the ChangeWave Alliance Research Network, this year's holiday spending is going to be extraordinarily better than it was one year ago. And who is the big beneficiary of this increased holiday spending? You guessed it: Amazon.

The survey shows huge gains in people who plan to shop at Amazon this holiday season. The quintessential online retailer is showing the most momentum among all online retailers, and its huge jump since the previous August survey in terms of those who plan to spend more money with the retailer is the largest online spending improvement ever recorded in a ChangeWave survey.

Based on the FedEx proclamations, our ChangeWave Alliance survey data, and just the overall awareness that this holiday season will be much better than it was one year ago, I expect AMZN shares to continue powering higher through the holiday season -- and well into 2010.

At the time of this writing, Tobin Smith owned shares of AMZN.

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