It’s a grand thing when the tone that emerges from economic data fits the mood of the season in which it is released. So here, for the holidays, is the festive news: The economy roared ahead at a 5 percent annual growth rate in the July through September quarter, the fastest quarterly growth since 2003.

That beats the 3.9 percent that the Commerce Department had earlier estimated for the third quarter. It follows a 4.6 percent growth rate in the second quarter, for the strongest six-month period for overall economic growth in more than a decade.

And a separate report from the government on Tuesday morning pointed to the good times continuing in the latter part of the year. Personal income rose 0.4 percent in November, and consumption spending rose a whopping 0.6 percent.

This data is all backward-looking, of course. But it suggests the stronger growth is real and sustainable — not just an artifact of an odd quirk in inventories, for example. (Inventories, after the latest revisions, neither added to nor subtracted from overall growth in the third quarter.) G.D.P. was “up for all the right reasons,” wrote Diane Swonk, chief economist of Mesirow Financial.