LATE DECEMBER is surely the best time to be a volunteer consumer. More than two million fellow Britons are out of the country, doing their bit for the economies of foreigners with more glamorous sun, snow or sand than ours. Most other commercial life in Britain has shut down, but those who delight in these things are free to indulge in cut-price retail.

Shopping seems rather a good mid-winter celebration, but it naturally brings out the jeremiads. All year (any year), an army of broadcasters has been telling us that the consumer is herded, stressed and ripped-off. But it is supposed to be especially poignant at the time of this Christian festival that we have abandoned our spirituality. Following Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein, many commentators figure that our hearts and minds have been turned into commercial space.

Let’s admit that most of this is tosh. For a start, it has never been easier to fashion a personal style of consuming. I bet there were more slimline, wholefood, vegetarian, down-sized Christmases this year than ever before. And, naturally, the middle classes are leading the way in refining their purchasing decisions. Which of us did not shed a tear as we sent Christ’s own transport — a donkey — to Africa? A nice piece of capitalist globalisation that: Far Eastern laptop, American software, world wide web, Scottish bank, virtual donkey, hypothetical happy African family, definite fat white male charge of self-satisfaction. And all the while we gently boogie to the fusion sounds of a Western record company CD of, say, Afghan musicians freed by the reviled American “imperium” to become part of the world music industry.

Of course, those people whose taste is for souks not malls, who want to wash the soil off vegetables for themselves, and who aim to transcend the crassly commercial, are guilty of much humbug. It is a peculiarity of modern anti-commercialism that the people who espouse it work harder (presumably for greater material reward) than those whom they affect to worry about — the happy-go-lucky proles. But then the middle classes have always combined ambition with moralising. Troubled by climate change, we cycle for the papers at the weekend, while wondering if we have earned enough Air Miles to fly to the Hindu Kush for some inner R & R. Our consciences are more expensive than the trash consumption of the underclass, and our capacity for worrying about the wrong things is limitless.

Primark is said to score badly with “ethical consumers”. Perhaps the machinists in the Third World who make its cheap-as-chips fashion would prefer to work for ethical giants such as Nike, or to be crafting carpets in the swirl of wood smoke in a darkened hut. Perhaps, more pragmatically, they think that Primark is adding to the stock of jobs where they live. I hope so, because Primark seems to have real charm. It delivers a whole gallimaufry of fashion, where the catwalk collides with the dressing-up box. Dishing up Footballers’ Wives, Dr Zhivago or Bohemian Rhapsody, Primark probably does more good to more young women all over the world than Body Shop.

One of the curiosities of mass affluence is the amount of unsnobbish good taste that there is about. Like Primark, Paperchase or Waterstone’s, Ikea provides uncondescending excellence. Of course, they may rely on self-service. Pity then, poor Simon Hoggart, of The Guardian, who wrote last week, as though it were a revelation, that the cheapness of a stopwatch at Argos is achieved at the price of inconvenience for its customers. Yes, and that is why ordinarily affluent people often choose to shop at H Samuel.

It depends on the price you set on cheapness and convenience. Indeed, only a few crazed fashionistas need the January sales, with their promise of bargains from this season’s lines. For the less demanding, there are entire malls and villages (in Bicester, for instance) specialising in factory outlet deals. Here, without rush or sharp elbows, there are truck-loads of bargains the year round.

Wherever you look, the consumer has reason to rejoice. Thirty years ago, grocery shopping was easier only because there was little more than best back and streaky to queue for, behind drearily-clad housewives windbagging away at the aproned drudge behind the counter. Now it seems obvious that Tesco is successful because it pleases huge numbers of people, including lots who want the least fuss possible to attend the experience. I do not claim all is perfect. I wish, for instance, that a Big Mac was more like a Whopper. But we can get most of what we want from retailers. Most stuff is made so well that we are bored with it before it breaks. Most computers, digital cameras and mobile phones are so good that even when we want a replacement, the old kit is welcomed by teenage relatives. We can send old phones and computers to the Third World, pretty sure that nothing second class is going there. The clothes we wouldn’t be seen dead in will grace a slum in Nairobi, or be recycled (like our cars) for a new life.

Willing or reluctant, obsessive or dismissive, we are all catered for. Shopophobes can get their stuff in with a minimum of trouble: they can shop without leaving the house. We can make expeditions to elegant malls, a form of tourism in its own right. The rich can buy fabulous luxury, and in doing so benefit us all. The poor can have much of the luxury previously reserved for the rich. And the morally snooty can enjoy all these benefits while sneering at them. Indeed, it is the self-consciously superior who don’t get what’s going on. It’s high time these big-spenders stopped moaning about their good fortune, and recognised how much virtue attends their consuming habits, and even the spending of the lower orders.

The author’s Rich Is Beautiful: A Very Personal Defence of Mass Affluence is published by The Social Affairs Unit

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