The woes of Woolies have inspired a wave of nostalgia for a Pick'n'Mix of cosy experiences that range from filching confectionery or broken biscuits, searching for 7in singles by Technotronic and Yazoo to buying Miners mascara and scratchy school uniforms. However, as the retailer's administrators assess possible offers for Woolworths' 800 stores, maybe we should all be concentrating not so much on the past of this business, but on what its passing means for the future of high streets, including yours.

Picture this: shuttered shops, an air of decay and unease usually associated with a windswept, failing inner-city shopping precinct in the shadow of a tower block. This could be the fate of your high street with the blight creeping out to surrounding streets.

Is this too doom-laden an image at this time of year when high streets are associated with present-buying festive bustle? Then remember that Woolworths is not the only retailer coping with this Christmas's recipe for retail adversity: inflexible leases, hard-hearted banks, customers feeling the pinch and credit insurers withdrawing cover from suppliers.

Consider also that the planned merger of HBOS and Lloyds TSB, which together have 3,000 branches, could result in the closure of a considerable number of these. When banks last rationalised their “high street presence” in the 1990s, the vacated units were filled by bar restaurants, or converted into executive apartments. But there is scant finance available today for hospitality start-ups or residential developments in erstwhile banking halls - for which you can blame the banks.

You could start to regret that you ever complained about the proliferation in the boom days of estate agents and coffee shops in your high street, or grumbled at the arrival of yet another Tesco Metro. Indeed, if your local Woolies closes, you may even be grateful to see the premises taken over by Tesco rather than left standing empty. But this symbolises our lack of concern for the crucial role that a vibrant high street plays in the health of a whole neighbourhood - and property prices, especially in a downturn.

The revamp of Marylebone High Street may be an upmarket example of what the regeneration of a high street can do for a postcode. But it provides a lesson that if the wellbeing of the high street is neglected, then the whole area can be afflicted.

You may start to feel a little guilty that you so seldom actually bought anything in your Woolies, or in any other of your high street shops, preferring instead the ease of online shopping or the swishly reassuring atmosphere of the mega-mall. Most of the regrets expressed in the past 24 hours about Woolworths' fate focus more on the diversions of yesteryear than the threatened disappearance of what was an essential shop for some, especially in smaller towns. In this make-do-and-mend era, I, for one, will miss Woolworths' haberdashery section; cotton reels and the other wherewithal to refurbish a tired garment have been either banished from most stores or relegated to “low-footfall” zones. If Woolworths dies, where will the fashionable pennypincher buy Dylon dyes?

The most immediate effect of the banks' decision to pull the plug on Woolworths seems set to be a Christmas price war; Deloitte, Woolworths' adminstrator, will, entirely reasonably, seek to discount stock so that it is not left unsold.

Other stores will be forced to compete; those already struggling will further jeopardise their survival; the more resilient will consolidate their position. Tesco and John Lewis are allowing customers to take advantage today of the Pre-Budget VAT reduction that takes effect next Monday. This move is a signal of their superior IT systems and sundry other strengths.

December 25 may be the key date in shoppers' calendars, but for troubled retailers, that day is also their quarterly rent payment date. Those businesses who cannot meet their rents will be at the mercy of their landlords who may send in the bailiffs to seize their stock. Additionally, they may need to fend off their banks who will anxious to foreclose on a business while it has the Christmas takings, however meagre.

The archaic Quarter Day arrangement and leases which ordain that rents can be upward-only are the Grinch that could steal the heart away from your high street this Christmas. Moreover, struggling stores that escape its clutches could still succumb on December 31, if they have breached the convenants on their loans agreed with the banks. Some of the retailers owned by private equity firms are thought to be especially vulnerable this year.

All this may have you rubbing your hands in glee at the prospect of a cut-price Christmas; and it is true that those with spare cash, small mortgages and oodles of equity in their homes, despite the housing market's decline, have seldom had such an opportunity to seize bargains.

But this enjoyment could be akin to the delectation of a Christmas speciality, such as brandy butter: the kind of treat that has nasty long-term consequences: a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips. For the price of discounts now will be a rather less attractive neighbourhood.

There is a tendency to believe in the high street's infinite ability to reinvent itself: in the last century, the butchers, fishmongers and grocers made way for Littlewoods and Victor Value stores, which were, in their turn, supplanted by the bar restaurants, coffee shops, estate agents, mobile phone outlets, TK Maxx's, Top Shops and Tesco's and other familar logos of the Noughties' high street. But this process of substitution could be suspended for the next couple of years in just yet another of the unforeseen repercussions of the credit crisis. You may have thought your local Woolies a little naff, but you may look back on it as part of a wonderful age that maybe you did not appreciate enough.

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