retail therapy
As the Christmas shop-fest recedes in our collective drink-addled memory, how many gifts did you receive this year that were exactly what you secretly wished and hoped for? I was given two fantastic pressies and couldn’t have been more delighted. Mind, I’ve a confession to make wrt the others as three went directly to the local charity shop and one is already re-wrapped in order to ‘re-gift’ next year. Sorry. Especially if it has your name on it. Not wishing to fully concede the moral high-ground too quickly, I genuinely expect a couple of mine will have followed similar suit and, for several years, I gave one person the same pressie three times on the trot: for the record, John Irving’s ‘A Prayer For Owen Meany’. What was I thinking, it was Christmas ferchristsakes not a wake!
According to damning research by Which? magazine, just one in twenty bargain purchases is actually such and found that virtually all items were either cheaper or available for the same price throughout the year. The reality is that, even within these Covid times, the whole marketing exercise that comprises Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, Giving Tuesday, Wkd Wednesday et al is all hype, all BS. Notwithstanding, and unsurprisingly, online sales rose 18% on last year, compared with a 6% decline in direct sales within department stores. Which most of us couldn’t do in any event.
Sadly, it transpires that during the festive period a third of those technically classed as living in poverty borrowed over £200 to cover the ever-rising cost of Christmas and the Trussell Trust, Britain’s largest foodbank operator, handed-out exactly 186,185 three-day emergency food parcels. For millions of families, the holidays are a severe pinch point that, and as they strive to attain the heavily publicised material goal, financial constraints are squeezed even tighter and frailties are further exposed. No child should go hungry at any time, let alone a time that’s supposed to be one of joy. In spite of Marcus Rashford’s sterling efforts, hunger has become such a normalised part of everyday life that there is now even a children’s book, Kate Milner’s ‘It’s a No-Money Day’, about foodbanks.
As our New Year resolutions line-up to tumble off the wagon it’s vital that we appreciate the one thing we can all attempt is to look after those less fortunate than ourselves. True connection, it’s becoming clear, depends not on quantity but on quality and, more often than not, less is more. And on that upbeat note, I shall later today raise a socially-distanced sanitised glass of fizz and wish you all Happy New Year!
