The grocer reported like-for-like sales for the period up 3.7%, excluding fuel, with weekly transactions up by one million year on year.
In the seven days leading up to 25 December, attracted 24 million customers to its stores in its busiest Christmas on record.
The non-food category grew at more than four times the rate of food over the period, assisted by marketing led events, such as Halloween, but also through the relaunch of Sainsbury's website in July.
The site offered 4,500 non-food products from July, rising to 8,000 in the run-up to Christmas, with items in categories such as soft furnishings, kitchenware and home electronics.
Sainsbury's has also benefited from the increasing trend of online grocery shopping. Over the quarter sales were up 15%, with a record half a million orders delivered in the four weeks to Christmas.
The Nectar loyalty programme, for which it is an affiliate, now has more than 16 million users and Sainsbury's has seen rise of 750,000 regular users within its stores.
Justin King, chief executive of Sainsbury's, said: "Our strategy of delivering great food at fair prices has resulted in a record Christmas performance, completing a strong third quarter on top of good growth last year."
The strong trading quarter adds to what was an already positive 2009 for Sainsbury's. In November it reported sales growth of 3.7% to £11.16m in the first half of the financial year, its fifth consecutive year of like-for-like sales growth.
Meanwhile, according to research from Nielsen, Waitrose has outshone other supermarkets over Christmas in terms of its sales increases. In the 12 weeks to 26 December the sales increase of 13.6% has resulted in Waitrose increasing its market share from 3.4% to 3.7%, compared to the same period last year.
According to the research house the sales were driven by new stores openings and also ‘robust' sales across the grocery sector in general.
Value sales across other supermarkets also increased over the same period, with Morrison's closely following Waitrose, in posted a 10.1% increase, with Asda (+6.1%), Sainsbury's (+5.9%) and Tesco (5.3%) following.
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