There appears to have been a significant in the amount of online shopping on Christmas Day this year. Approximately 3.5 million Britons spent some of the day shopping online buying goods worth around £53 million in what was retailers’ busiest Christmas Day ever and a 66% increase in the value of sales the previous year. By comparison around 3.8 million attended Anglican church services.

According to figures from the Internet Media Retail Group, sales by companies that operate online were on course to finish December at £7.4 billion, up 106 per cent on the same month in 2006. Sales through web stores, including high street retailers’ websites, over the past three months are expected to have topped £17.5 billion – a jump of more than 80 per cent from last year.

I wonder whether there is scope to harness the desire to shop for bargains with religious worship. On future Christmas days we will see midnight mass at St Amazonius the patron saint of long tails; Jesus may appear on the road to Ebayus. It would be no difficulty for Marks and Spencer to convert itself into St Michael’s. I’ll stop at this point I need not dwell on American imports such as the Burger King of Kings.... Gah, this is poor stuff even by my own low standards!