Celebrate something deeper than shopping

This morning every retailer in the country will wake early, stirred from their fitful sleep by a mixture of optimism and anxiety.

They will be optimistic because this, two Saturdays before Christmas, is one of the great, if not the greatest, shopping days of the year. That optimism may be tinged by the fear that it might not be and justifiably so — many, many retailers might not survive another poor Christmas, maybe the sixth or seventh in a row.

The indications, though, are that we will rise to the challenge and that most shop owners will sleep far better tonight than they did last night, the sound of purring tills the perfect, reassuring lullabye. One estimate suggests we will spend something around €530m on food and drink alone this Christmas, a spectacular figure by any criteria in a country of around five million souls.