In terms of sheer financial complexity the international banking rescue orchestrated by the US and British governments over recent months has nothing on my family's Christmas shopping arrangements.

Nobel prize-winning economists would struggle to unwind the dozens of interlinked transactions, conducted in numerous currencies across continents, that ultimately ensure that, on Christmas Day, my great-aunt in Gosforth gets her Fenwick's voucher, and my grandma-in-law in Bratislava gets her portable, varispeed battery-operated foot massager.

The problem is both geographical and generational. The huge distances between the participants in the annual gift-giving ritual, and the fact that many of the participants have never used a computer - never mind purchased anything with one - necessitate a kind of year-round international muling operation, whereby cash and goods are smuggled over borders in business and pleasure trips, with all the transactions finally reconciled and accounted for by 10am or thereabouts on December 25, by which time no one has a clue who bought what for whom.

But at least this means that I get to avoid “Black Friday” - the day after Thanksgiving when most Americans do their Christmas shopping.

They call it Black Friday because supposedly it is the day that most retailers move into the black for the fiscal year. A few years ago, retailers worked out that if they used a few items as loss leaders - such as a 42in high-definition LCD television for $598 (£388) - they could attract hyperventilating media coverage and rock-stadium crowds for their post-Thanksgiving sales.

Depression or no Depression, this year was no different - one man was trampled to death at a Wal-Mart in Long Island, and two died in a gunfight at a Toys'R'Us in Palm Desert. Of course, most decent, sensible people are appalled by the spectacle of Black Friday. Which is why retailers invented Cyber Monday - ie, yesterday.

This is when America's middle and upper classes ignore all their office duties and instead spend the day trawling websites, comparing prices, reading product reviews and spec-sheets, calculating tax and postage, specifying gift-wrapping options, creating accounts, forgetting passwords, entering and re-entering credit card details and being told that the product they want is available only in-store - by which time their mouse-fingers are paralysed and their eyeballs bleeding.

Cyber Monday has its own perils. You might not get trampled or shot, but you might be sacked for shopping on the internet at work. Even worse, you could be sacked for a completely different reason by someone you have just watched shopping on the internet at work (a galling fate that unfortunately befell a friend of mine this year).

All this makes me think that perhaps we should abstain from Christmas consumerism this year, for the sake of our ravished bank accounts, not to mention our souls. But this would be a terrible decision, if you believe the late economist John Maynard Keynes.

He posited that if people stop spending their money and save instead, then demand falls, the economy collapses, and everyone ends up significantly poorer, savings or no savings. “The paradox of thrift”, Keynes called it.

Of course, if you continue to spend for the good of the economy and everyone else padlocks shut their wallets, then you're in serious trouble. There's an economic term for that, too.

It's called Sod's Law.

Snakes alive

Fortunately, there are unquantifiable benefits to Christmas shopping - particularly when you do it online. Take the text message I received from my mum in Northumberland yesterday morning. It read, with no further explanation: “Snake arrived, wrapped in Mr Men paper, gift card beautifully written in gold pen.” My five-year-old nephew - the ultimate recipient - will no doubt be delighted.

Return to boom?

So far the economic omens don't look too bad for the 2008 Christmas shopping season. Black Friday sales were up 3 per cent on last year, for starters. Another positive sign came on Sunday at about 1.30pm, when my wife and I were huddled over a laptop trying to work out what to buy for Uncle Hubert in New York (deluxe kipper-smoking kit, or cashmere-lined bunny-eared slippers?).

Suddenly, two loud explosions - BLAM! BLAM! - sent us diving under the desk in preparation for the Big One. But it wasn't a earthquake - it was the double sonic boom of the space shuttle, diverted from Florida to Edwards Air Force Base, near LA. And why is this good economic news? Because when Nasa starts using the shuttle - which at maximum thrust consumes 47,365 galllons per minute of liquid hydrogen, a by-product of the black stuff imported from Saudi Arabia - you know that oil is cheap again.

Merry Christmas, indeed.

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