About 20 years ago, an American friend, Wendy, spent Christmas with me at my parents' house in Waterford. She was a great guest, except for one thing. She put huge pressure on me to go back to Dublin on St Stephen's Day, to my parents' mild annoyance. We travelled up on an empty train, and Wendy was positively bubbling with excitement. Her excitement began to subside at Heuston and was deflated entirely by the time we reached the city centre. "Where are the sales? Where is the buzz?" she asked plaintively, as we walked the silent streets. We could not even find somewhere to eat, writes Breda O'Brien.
I have a confession to make. I liked the fact that we were such a disappointment to her. At that time, Ireland used to close down for a week, and I thought it was a very sane custom. It might not have been much fun if you were alone, or a member of a spectacularly dysfunctional family, but for most people, it was a chance to unwind and recuperate. Sure, it was also linked to our almost moribund economy, but it meant people actually rested, and visited other people over Christmas.
Wendy would have felt right at home in Ireland this year. Apparently, 1,500 people queued at the Mahon Point Shopping Centre in Cork to get in at 2am on Thursday morning to shop. The entire first floor of the centre was flooded with people at that ungodly hour, and the management had to employ security staff to prevent anyone getting crushed in the rush.
Although it is akin to admitting to a lack of some vital feminine attribute, I am completely devoid of the shopping gene. Send me to the shops to get three items, and I will come home with three items.
I know, from vast hours spent in observation, that many women find shopping relaxing and sales a positively ecstatic experience. I accept completely that I am an oddity. However, is there not something just mildly insane about queuing to shop a mere day or so after the biggest shopping orgy of the year has just finished? Something even just a touch desperate about it all?
Economists are puzzled. Consumer confidence is lower this year than any time since the dotcom bubble burst in the early part of this decade. Yet people are spending more than ever.
That's good news in the short term for the economy, because we depend on a bizarre system where people spend money that they do not have for things that they do not need, and if enough people stop, the whole system will collapse.
Yet it is not good news in the long term for society because it is a completely unsustainable way to live. Take the shopping centre. It is dependent on people travelling by car. As oil becomes scarcer and more expensive, that lifestyle will begin to look positively decadent.
In the meantime, though, the small, independently owned shop will have become a thing of the past, leaving us without viable alternatives.
The New Economics Forum in Britain started cataloguing a phenomenon in 2002 that they later termed "clone-town Britain". Every high street was beginning to look the same, with the same dominant chain stores and the same fast-food outlets. A visit to the Mahon Point website shows that clone-town Britain is alive and well in Ireland. Many of the big British multiples are there, along with a sprinkling of hardy Irish retailers who have managed to survive.
These huge shopping centres kill off local independent businesses at an alarming rate, and with it, ironically, goes much of our choice. Go to Tesco and you will find the same handful of varieties of apples and potatoes.
Any produce that does not sell in industrial quantities is ruthlessly squeezed out. The small, tasty apple that happens to have a less than perfect skin becomes a memory.
The giant stores can bully smaller providers or even put them out of business. Sure, food is cheaper, but often at a huge, invisible cost to local economies. The same is true of every giant chain. Ikea's arrival is awaited with greater anticipation than the second coming of Christ, but it will kill off independent furniture stores like so many flies, snarl up our traffic even more, and still we can't wait.
It is even true of cinemas. Aside from a few artier cinemas, our viewing choice is mostly limited to Hollywood blockbusters. It takes a small gem like Once, directed by John Carney and starring Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, to remind us that other forms of cinema are not just possible, but can be real celebrations of our own culture.
Remember six years ago, when there was a public day of mourning after September 11th? People were disgusted, validly pointing out that we did not mourn tragedies of greater impact in the same way.
However, the day itself was a very interesting phenomenon. Deprived of places to go or things to do, people just relaxed, or, God forbid, actually discovered it was possible to spend 24 hours without shopping.
All our late-opening and early-opening shops are dependent on people working those hours.
Usually, it is the part-timers, or the foreign-born staff, who are cheaper to pay, who end up getting the unsocial hours.
My husband conducted an informal survey of practically everyone who served him in the last two weeks. Most of them resented working long hours, but felt helpless to change it.
Ironically, the sales assistants become dependent in turn on shopping after what used to be normal hours, because they cannot shop at any other time themselves.
Would it be so impossible to have shops close at lunchtime on Christmas Eve? My guess is that it would not affect sales one whit, because people would just transfer their panic-spending to the morning. It would mean, though, that thousands of retail trade workers could get home to their families.
And do we need Stephen's Day sales? If there were a ban on shops opening until 10am on December 28th, we might rediscover time to reflect and re-charge. Grocery stores could be permitted to open for limited hours. Wendy might not like it, but a moratorium on spending for just a few days a year would be healthy, nonetheless.