THE GUARDIAN

One day they'll look back at the queues of shoppers and think as we do about those lines of youngsters in 1914

Christmas sent out the very strong signal that, as a nation, we'd lost all our enthusiasm for buying stuff. Not my personal Christmas, you understand - I got a very pleasing haul, if anything slightly up on last year. But retailers reported a drop of between 2% and 4% on last year's figures. And if that doesn't sound much, bear in mind that the curve of yuletide spending had given vendors to believe that we would unfailingly cough up more every year and end up giving each other speedboats and well-located semis.

Since there's no sign of a creeping unwillingness to incur debt, the most serviceable conclusion is this: we still like to purchase, but the allure of the traditional, rather feverish, spending season had worn off, replaced by the modern trend of shopping all the time, even when we're in the bath, or asleep.

Boxing Day, however, totally skewed this. People were willingly standing in queues of 50; they were filling up car parks before the shops had opened, and having to be told to go home by loudhailer. The British Retail Consortium estimates that we'll have spent over five billion quid by the end of the sales, which is more than ... well, more than we spend on pet food in the entire year. More than we spend on chocolate. Not as much as we spend on booze, but still, you'll concede, a hell of a lot.

This makes absolutely no sense - to start with, many major retailers started their sales before Christmas, so the idea of Boxing Day as this dambusting cascade of vendor-generosity really doesn't stand up. For another thing, it is meant to be a holiday - spending it with grabby bargain-freaks has to be the least restful idea in the world.

It's true that people handing you complimentary sweets - as M&S staff were doing in Marble Arch - gives everyone a fillip. I flew on Christmas Day once and had so many free Quality Street at check-in that I threw up on the plane. Not in the manner of an eight-year-old, either. I was 30. Sorry, I digress. This is still craziness, on an epic scale - people will look at these snaking lines of shoppers one day and think as we do about the youngsters queueing up really cheerfully to go and die in 1914. What were you people thinking? Where were your mums, telling you not to be daft?

First, I blame the demise of event telly. As recently as 10 years ago, you would not have gone out on Boxing Day because Grease would have been on. And National Velvet; in a perfect year, back to back. Nobody stays in for telly anymore, which is a shame, since just about all that could be said for it as a media phenomenon was that it stopped you going off to do something even more flagrantly wasteful. Second, it strikes me that, amid all the blustering, noisy pro-hunt fanatics, there is a quieter army of people who have actually listened to the arguments and decided that maybe it is a cruel sport, after all. The day after Christmas, once deemed an excellent time to chase country vermin, must yawn emptily for the reformed poshos. I'll bet they went to Bluewater instead, to elbow people in the face in the pursuit of a polycrene hoodie at a fraction of its regular price.

The steady breakdown of the traditional family unit must surely have had a pincer affect. On one flank, it allows for iconoclastic, highly individualistic behaviour, such as refusing to hang about for leftovers because they're disgusting, and going shopping instead. On the other, it complicates familial relations when nobody stays married to the person they started off with, and makes tantrums more likely. That's the only way I can see House of Fraser being an appealing prospect - when the alternative is staying home for a great big scrap.

Underlying all this is the constant that, as a nation, we are unnaturally fond of getting stuff for less than we believe it's worth. You'd think, by now, that we'd have got wise to what is essentially a psychological scam - a T-shirt is only worth 50 quid because we're told it is. If it's suddenly down to 20 for random reasons, you'd think that might give us some doubts about the original valuation. Nope. We think: "Cool! French Connection just gave me £30!"

As manias go, it remains less dangerous than joining a war. And it is more fun than January depression. But still, it just doesn't suit you, that coat/bag/fashion wrap. That's why it's so cheap; that's why it's still on the shelf. It's because it's horrid.

zoe_williams@ntlworld.com