BEST BOOKS ON...

CONSUMERISM

I LOOKED but didn’t buy on Black Friday through to the sinistersounding Cyber Monday. So many reasons (lack of need, money, mojo) but mainly because I find the notion of a festival of shopping, tagged onto America’s Thanksgiving, so disconcertingly out-of-whack.

Carbon emissions have gone up again. But gee, let’s burn another hole in the credit card and all go to hell in a shopping-cart. What on earth would America’s Puritan founding fathers make of it?

I sense that for many, though, this might be the year that Christmas gets recalibrated. Ten years ago, I wrote a book, Sucking Eggs: What Your Wartime Granny Could Teach You About Diet, Thrift And Going Green, examining how rationing forced that generation to think mindfully about consumption.

Next year, I want to live more by my book. My kids are on board, too.

For Christmas, our focus is on things to do, rather than have — though I’m not sure the eight-year-old’s fantasy of staying in an ice hotel in Lapland quite fits the agenda.

That U.S. classic, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, opens on the most virtuous of Christmases: ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,’ grumbles Jo. The March girls are going without, while their father fights the American Civil War, yet agree to spend a dollar each on their mother.

From their mother, each receives one present: a copy of John Bunyan’s allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress.

The modern equivalent of the book’s Vanity Fair, a frivolous yearlong fair, is surely all those online shopping sites with their comehither 30 per cent discount emails.

My fondest Christian allegorical wintry read will always be The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe. It’s set during World War II with rationing, so I have sympathy for Edmund having his head turned by a finelooking lady in furs offering Turkish Delight. He comes good, and when Father Christmas arrives, he brings just one perfect, necessary gift for each of the Pevensie children.

Shop wisely this Christmas.