According to this article, spam in Britain has risen for 50 percent in the last two months alone:

"As Christmas approaches, the daily trawl through in-boxes clogged with offers of fake Viagra, loans and sex aids is tipped to take even longer.
"Email systems are overloaded or melting down trying to keep up with all the spam," said Dan Druker, a vice president at Postini.
His company has detected 7 billion spam emails worldwide in November compared to 2.5 billion in June."

Seems like spammers are trying to make a little bit of spare cash for Christmas presents, right?
Will spam ever stop? Here's what Trend Micro's Dave Rand thinks:

"It will only end when people stop buying diet pills, herbal highs and sexual performance enhancers. The products they are selling by spam are exactly the same products that they sold in the Middle Ages. This really is a human problem, not a computer problem."