Is there anything in this world, really truly anything, more ghastly than the wedding list? I have to ask. A flock of brides laid siege to the headquarters of HSBC in London yesterday, protesting about the bank's apparent role in the sudden demise of a wedding list company, thereby depriving them of their gifts.

And while the emotional signage clearly indicated some modern-day tragedy, with one's heart supposedly bleeding for innocent young women having their lives ruined by beastly bankers, I found myself struggling not to cheer. Plainly there is something seriously wrong with my moral compass.

Wedding lists have always struck me as one of the most vulgar things in society. They are not about giving; but about taking. In this instance - the failure of the online gift service Wrapit - I can find little sympathy for the complacent, well-heeled young brides who sought to demand presents with menaces, and have instead been left stranded by the exigencies of the credit crunch.

In fact, if I am very honest, there is a pleasing hubris in seeing such a naff symbol of materialism being consumed by the very culture that it helped to create.

One can feel very sorry for the various wedding guests, of course, who in many cases will have lost their money. These same people will doubtless now dig in their pockets to buy a second gift, because they're nice people and they want to do the right thing.

But listen to the brides themselves twittering on television and one is overwhelmed with the sense that Wrapit's collapse is a kind of divine vengeance for a consumer society running out of control. There was Emma, on Sky News, prattling on about her ceremony by the sea in Italy - “not huge, just 80 people... awesome fun” - and the close to £5,500 of gifts she had lost and how bad she felt for her guests.

And over on the BBC, there was much the same, with an angst-ridden bride who tossed her hair like an angry pony and bemoaned the loss of £7,500 of goodies that had been pledged to her. Online, although one or two brides expressed their sense of embarrassment, their shame seemed to be about letting down their guests, not the function of the list itself or the amount of the haul. They seemed totally oblivious, these complacent young women, of the moral ambiguity of seeking gifts on such terms.

Long ago, wedding lists stopped being about the delight of giving and receiving simple gifts and became a bourgeois financial contract. The bridal couple sent the guest an invitation to an expensive meal - and with it a list of things they needed to furnish their lifestyles. Implictly: you come, you give us exactly what we want. And even if we've been living together in a well-furnished home for years, we still want it.

As if this impertinence were not enough, the joy of giving is finally extinguished, in my experience, by trawling the stuffy John Lewis website (I never tried Wrapit) vainly trying to find an item on the list that fits one's budget and that stirs one's imagination in any way. One cannot see the gift; nor touch it; nor invest any emotion in it; one makes a choice based solely on financial value. You are merely a facilitator of a box that can now be ticked off.

You can almost hear them checking it: large sauce boat - tick; coasters times 12 - tick; six serving spoons ditto - tick; 12 napkins - tick; 12 dinner plates - tick... oh damn! We only got six soup plates, at £5.50 each. Why on earth would anyone give us only six? What cheapskate was that?

The average wedding list on Wrapit, apparently, ran up a haul worth £2,800, but obviously some couples aspire to much, much more. In a society as nakedly acquisitive as this, why have limits? Why not ask for contributions to a new car? Or do as one bride in my experience did, and ask her guests to buy vouchers from a travel company in order to pay for the honeymoon?

Why not go farther still and ask guests to subsidise the mortgage for the first few months of married life? Simply send cheques, minimum value £75.

I can see the logic of the wedding list, but that has never made it right. There is the question of unwanted and duplicate gifts. Surely it is sensible in a waste-conscious age to eradicate unwanted items? To which the answer is yes, but only if one wishes to inhabit a world where freedom and creativity are ruled out.

Like many yuppie brides in the 1980s - but one who despised the conformity of wedding lists even then - I endured more than my fair share of heated hostess trolleys, toasted sandwich makers and slow cookers, which caused much private mirth and several trips to the shops to exchange them. But an equal number of gifts were unique and imaginative and we treasured them for years (or at least until the divorce).

And there is another point. When couples receive thoughtful, striking gifts, they automatically remember the people who gave them to them. The essence of a gift as something memorable, freely given, is further enriched by this. That rowan tree, that unusual rose, that painting... when I see them, they remind me of the people who gave them to me.

Unless I am much mistaken, the couple for whom I buy bath towels or cutlery from a wedding list will not routinely think of me as they dash from the shower or butter their toast.

Wedding lists have other fatal flaws. They can be the refuge of people who, tragically, do not realise how dull they are. They hint at an unfortunate mixture of arrogance and social anxiety. Even worse, I have always thought, wedding lists send a clear message that you do not trust the good taste of your best friends, so must remove any choice from their hands.

Which means we should all be doubly offended when we are asked to contribute to one.

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