Boxing Day may as well be symbolized by a ringing till and hoards of queues with the odd pitched tent if what the mainstream media has you believe. The excitement of people practically falling over one another to get a cardigan they didn't need to begin with is a fascinating one. What is it with the red mist surging over them when they're fighting over a top from Next with a 30% tag hanging over a sleeve exactly? Is there something in the flu shots and vaccines we're given to trigger a reaction to buy buy buy on Boxing Day?
I jest ever so slightly, but what makes us act in such a way in acting in such a way to buy the must-have item, which much of the time, we spend on money we don't have, for something that we ultimately, don't need? Were those Beats headphones and flat screen TV really necessary?
According to the BBC, thousands of people gathered from shortly after midnight at major shopping centres around the country, such as Westfield in London, Bluewater in Kent and Birmingham's Bullring, where Debenhams, Selfridges and Next were offering discounts of up to 50%.
James Murray, from Experian, said: "Christmas 2012 is on track to be another record-breaker for online retail, outstripping 2011 on all fronts.
"The current market trends suggest that in the UK, Boxing Day will be the biggest day for online retail, with an estimated 126 million visits to online retail outlets and a massive 17 million hours spent online shopping on this day alone."
Our greedy and gluttonous selves aren't content with the food we've eaten or how much red wine we've consumed on Christmas Day; now we need to shop to work off the excess bulge from our waistlines and our wallets.
Materialism is a lot like chasing a horse you can never catch - the latest must-have will always be ahead with what we're supposedly content with. Now that there's an iPhone 5, dump that iPhone 4 like a pretty girlfriend leaves a guy punching well above his weight. And so it goes.
Spending in an almost wreckless manner considering the costs of Christmas has a direct effect on the debt we place on ourselves through credit cards and bank/third party loans. Many people unfortunately aren't responsible enough to be reminded that creditors come knocking and want paying. The concept of money being an IOU or debt is one that many are oblivious to. A concept of which that if there were no debt, there wouldn't be a single paper note in existence.
Add the interest payments on top with every day costs on top of that and it becomes insurmountable for many families. At a time of economic hardship, with the austerity measures set to be made by the incumbent government, it's going to get worse. A whole lot worse. If people are going to buy goods, they can at least invest in some gold or silver bullion, something of real worth, that will only rise in wealth and not depreciate, unlike fiat currencies.
The UK is in a particularly bad spot because it is on the brink of economic collapse. You read that correctly. Why? It's not because of something that has happened overnight. Briefly, it's because of the debt we and the government via the banks have placed on ourselves, with a currency backed by thin air.
Though the United Kingdom has no exclusivity of this dubious honour, with a GDP 950% debt. Add to that the sale of gold to Germany and the bailout of AIG from former PM Gordon Brown in 1999 at rock-bottom prices, inflation set to become hyperinflation and a bond market bubble at a 300-year high that's about to burst and it doesn't bode well. You think we're in an economic crisis now? The 2008 credit crunch was just a warm up for what is coming in the not too distant future. Just you wait until hyperinflation kicks in on the price of food, the price of a gallon of petrol hits double figures and there are riots in the streets calling for the heads of banksters, but by then it'll all be too late.
The BBC, Sky News and other media stooges will paint a different picture and say that everything is fine and that there's growth forecast for Q1 in 2013. But it's all a distraction, a red herring telling you that everything is fine. And it's apathy; complacency, complicity and laziness that will inevitably make us pay. In the words of Ayn Rand, 'You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality'.
One other thing that the media won't tell you is that there was an estimated 70,000 families below the poverty line who couldn't afford Christmas this year and we don't contemplate how lucky and fortunate that people are able to enjoy the festivities. And that's mainly due to a lack of spirituality in societal communities and as individuals. There's no sense of spirituality, whether it be mentally, physically, psychologically or through religious practice. Explain how people are happy to pitch a tent at the front of the doors of stores in Oxford Street, but don't even know their next-door neighbour's first name, let alone know what they look like.
And that's something no amount of money can buy: the collective will of compassion and love we can show one another. You might feel content with your new Macbook, but there comes a time in your life where no amount of money spent can feel or fill that emptiness in one's soul.
People instead could perhaps be creative: write a short story, learn a new skill, take up a new sport or a new activity. Start a new blog, take up a short course. Whatever you want. You are in charge of your life. You don't owe corporations or department stores a damn thing. If anything they owe YOU for your time and constant barrage of discounts and 0% finance on credit and store cards.
Then again, advertisers are good at their sole job - selling something at you as though you're herds flocking to the sales and making you ignorant at the same time.