Shopping is for Life, Not Just for Christmas

As will be apparent to anyone lacking the blessed faculty of hibernation, the corporate ejaculation in the annual cycle of consumer-screwing has become increasingly premature. This year certain plucky little pumpers decreed the season open in August: a possibility which, like many recent heights of cultural Britishness, had once seemed merely satirical. Nor is the trend confined to Christmas: a few years ago a well-known manufacturer of sickly chocolate eggs was sugar-rushing the Resurrection by the first week in January. It is to be hoped that the logical end result - year-round grunting and squealing that there are only three hundred and sixty-five shopping days before everything - will produce an appropriate afterglow of spiritual consolation and family values.