Batteries Not Included

I was in two minds as to whether to write anything this week, it being Christmas and eventually decided that I would publish a day earlier than normal as my usual posting day falls on Christmas Day. No doubt tomorrow most of you will be too busy to read my musings. Too busy stuffing turkeys and peeling sprouts or frantically cannibalising remote controls and clocks for batteries because there is always one gift that gets opened bearing the legend "Batteries Not Included" which you didn't notice when you bought it. This probably explains why 27th December is the fifth biggest day for battery sales in the year with UK consumers buying 2.1 million of them that day. That said, it is estimated that about 400,000 people go off in search of batteries on Christmas Day itself with petrol stations and small convenience stores doing the bulk of the trade since stores of more than 3,000 square feet cannot open on Christmas Day.[1]

Should all shops be allowed to open on Christmas Day? It's an argument that surfaces from time to time;  should the shops be open, serving a need[2] or ought we to protect 25th December as a special day? Before the Sunday Trading Act of 1994 we got on pretty well with the shops being closed on Sunday, but since they have been allowed to open on the Sabbath we accept it and now find it strange to see a shop closed on a Sunday.[3] Christmas Day opening would probably be similar; if it were allowed we would soon reach a time when the idea of the shops not being open would be alien, but Christmas does not evolve in the same way as other aspects of our lives.

How we usually see the High Street on Christmas Day...

...would this be preferable?

When you look at Christmas it hasn't really changed much, certainly not in my lifetime. The traditional Christmas dinner is the same, we buy the same "treats" each year, watch the same TV programmes (by and large), The Queen's speech is still on at three o'clock and the Christmas songs are stuck in a time warp. Slade, Mud, Greg Lake, The Pogues, The Waitresses and Jona Lewie still get trotted out every year, few new Christmas songs emerge, or if they do they do not endure. The gifts change as fashions and fads wax and wane, but not much else changes, but having all of the shops open on Christmas Day would be less evolution and more revolution.

Ostensibly, Britain remains a Christian country. At the last Census in 2011, 33 million people in England and Wales (59.3% of the population) stated that they were Christians; the next largest religious group were Muslims with 2.7 million people (4.8%) while 14.1 million people (around 25%) reported no religion. I would suggest that of the 33 million people reporting as Christians, the number who practice is considerably lower. The argument that we should maintain the special nature of Christmas Day loses weight when we consider that relatively few people celebrate it as the birth of Christ (more worship Mammon) and that years ago, when a far greater proportion of the population were practicing Christians, there was far more happening on 25th December. At one time football matches were a regular part of the Christmas Day experience and there were trains and buses to get players and spectators to the ground too. Were the shops to open on Christmas Day they would be of little use without public transport to enable shoppers and workers to get to them (not everyone drives and places like Oxford Street are not somewhere many people would want to drive to anyway). Given the king's ransom that tube drivers expect to be paid to work on Boxing Day the Lord alone knows how much they would want to work on Christmas Day. But on the other hand, if Christmas Day became just like any other day, why should anyone expect to be paid any differently just because of the date?

The argument that Britain has become a multicultural society and many people do not follow the Christian faith and therefore need not be bound by its traditions and mores has some merit. However, while society remains a fairly tolerant one, I remain unconvinced that the rights and traditions of the majority should be subservient to the wishes of a minority. A reversal of roles would find many Christians living abroad having to adapt to and comply with the customs and laws of the countries they have chosen to live in. Small shopkeepers who open on Christmas Day do so legally and I imagine that the majority of them belong to faiths that do not celebrate Christmas as such, so what harm do they do by being open? It is estimated that a record £636 million will be spent online by UK consumers on Christmas Day this year,[4] so given that people obviously want to shop, why stop them from doing so in person?

We have seen a sea change in our culture in recent years and are fast becoming a 24/7 society. I'm not sure that many people need to go to a supermarket at 3 a.m. but some people, night workers for instance, probably find it convenient. In times of significant unemployment perhaps having shops, banks and other businesses open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year would be a boost for the economy. Plenty of people work shifts (I know someone who exclusively works nights) and the more people that worked nights the more demand there would be for services (night workers still have to eat, so restaurants and sandwich shops would have customers) and potentially more jobs would be created. Somehow, however I doubt that the potential benefits and possible demand actually exist and what would happen is that just a few more staff would be employed to do more hours. In an era when the Monday-Friday, 9-5 contract is increasingly being replaced by more flexible working arrangements, extended opening hours have become the norm and will probably continue to do so.

Motorists queue for petrol station gifts and batteries, Christmas 2015?

 The bottom line is, err, the bottom line. For many businesses if opening on Christmas Day is going to be profitable then they are going to want to do it. Historically we have seen the chaos of the January Sales, this year we have seen the pandemonium of Black Friday, no doubt if, or when, the shops open on Christmas Day we will see shoppers thronging Oxford Street and Westfield, Lakeside and Bluewater, all in search of bargains but mainly just bumping up the retailer's profits.

Personally I don't care one way or the other. To those who want the shops to be open on Christmas Day I would say, don't you care about the staff who might want to celebrate Christmas at home quietly with the families and friends? And can't you go one day a year without retail therapy? Or, to those who argue that the shops should stay closed I say if you don't like the idea, you don't have to go to the shops on Christmas Day.

Whatever happens in the future, the shops are open today (Christmas Eve), so off you go, get those last minute gifts and that extra bag of sprouts. Oh, and don't forget the batteries.

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[1] The Christmas Day (Trading) Act 2004

[2] Need is moot, who cannot go one day without shopping?

[3] The toy shop The Entertainer is an exception. Owned by Christian entrepreneur Gary Grant, the store is closed on Sundays.

[4] Source: Experian and IMRG, the industry association for online retailers.