Post-Christmas Shopping

Well, it's that other time of the year now. The frenzied pre-Christmas shopping, followed by the obligatory Christmas Day feasting and frolicking, has now given way to a frenzied post-Christmas shopping spree. Except that now there is the added delight that this new bout of shopping is mainly for oneself and not on presents for others, so some really expensive and useful stuff can now be bought which will soon become indispensable accoutrements of one's day-to-day life without which life would be unimaginable.

Now you may wonder at this point what ever happened to the economic recession which was supposed to have drained us of all our cash and emptied our pockets, making our very survival precarious. Miraculously, as from nowhere, we have money to spend on yet another frenetic round of shopping. In spite of all our earlier whingeing and whining, all our chest-beating and lamentations about our sorry financial state, our coffers are inexplicably full again. And so we lay siege to the stores again in our thousands, snapping up the bargains and must-have buys like there is no tomorrow. And where our pockets are not deep enough, there's always the trusty credit card to come to the rescue.

And so the show goes on, and it goes on simply because it must go on, simply because we know no other way of going on. We shop, we consume, we shop, we consume. We invent needs and we shop to satisfy these made-up needs. It does not matter that only a short while ago we felt abysmally sorry for ourselves and we raged against the bankers and the financiers for supposedly destroying our purchasing power and reducing us to penury. Somehow we're back on our feet and out there jostling with all the other dedicated shoppers to have our share of goods. You may have perceived from all this soul-searching an eternal truth of our modern world. Never mind about “where there’s life there’s hope”. I say unto you, my followers, “where there’s shopping there’s life”. As long as we can shop, we feel confident that there can’t be much wrong with the world whatever else is going on. As long as we can shop, God is in his Heaven, Satan in his Hell, and Man... in his Shopping Mall. And Christmas is of course the perfect excuse for a mad buying spree. The stores were closed for one day and already we were feeling the effects of this in nasty withdrawal symptoms. The ceaseless telly adds on Christmas Day have whetted our apetite and kept us wanting but we were powerless to do anything. Now with Boxing Day here and the stores open again and tempting us with unmissable offers at knock-down prices, it would almost be a dereliction of duty to stay at home and pass up such an opportunity. So out we go to the high street, the shopping mall, the shopping centre, the industrial estate, the hyper-market, to get in those items that will revolutionise our lives and ensure our happiness for a little while longer. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and get shopping!