WHAT is your ideal Christmas Day? A lie-in, a gut-busting dinner with friends and family, followed by a snooze in front of the big film on TV? Or would you rather use your holiday to cram in some extra shopping, grabbing a few bargains in the seasonal sales?
Last week MSPs were asked to consider those questions before voting on Labour MSP Karen Whitefield's bill proposing that department stores close on Christmas Day and New Year's Day to protect shop workers from over-eager retailers who might want 365 days of trading a year.
Despite campaigning by business and tourism leaders, who believe a ban on Christmas and New Year opening would damage Scotland's growing reputation as a festive destination, MSPs backed the proposals by 99 to four. Although it is likely at the next stage of the bill that ministers will try to engineer a compromise on January 1 to serve the hundreds of thousands who flock to Scotland for Hogmanay, there is little opposition to a law that ring-fences December 25. While there are no public polls on the issue, it is widely accepted that most people just aren't interested in hoovering up cut-price Rudolph jumpers or inspecting the latest high-definition TVs on a day that is one of the highlights of the year.
But one view is that if the public in an increasingly secular Scotland are given a choice, they might gradually view Christmas Day differently. Professor Gill Hogg, an expert in retail strategy and shopping behaviour, at the University of Strathclyde, thinks a slide towards Christmas being "just another day" could start with the high street being open.
"I think if you were to ask people today if they would like shops to open on Christmas Day they will say no, and at the moment there is little demand for it, but I do feel that once the opportunity is there people will want to use it.
"Would you get into the situation where you are asking the person you've just given a gift to do you want to go and return it now?' There is a creeping effect at work. If the shops were open, would people leave it to really the last minute to get a gift?"
Hogg, who personally views a ban on department stores opening on December 25 as "wonderful", points out that we are also in a weak retail climate where sales are starting "earlier and earlier". If the option to open on December 25 became available, she says, some retailers could be tempted to use it to launch their seasonal sales, and customers might find themselves "drifting there" without thinking about it.
Despite Hogg's concerns, Christmas hasn't always been special in Scotland. Until the 1960s December 25 was a working day for many Scots, and even today the TUC estimate that more than 100,000 people work on Christmas Day in Scotland.
Not all of them are going to care about celebrating Christmas, says Hogg.
"Believing Christmas Day is different' has a number of implications for a multicultural society. For some people, Christmas means nothing, and we have to take that into account if we want an honest debate.
"I've had students asking why the university isn't open over Christmas - they aren't Christian, the festival means nothing to them. If we accept that we are a multicultural society then this debate shifts a little: considering how few people nowadays go to church, and that Sunday is one of the busiest days in the shops all year round, then you have to accept Christmas is not special for everyone."
Andrew Turnbull, senior lecturer in retail marketing at Robert Gordon University, adds that under the modern cult of shopping, Britain has moved from half-day closing to Sunday trading to a retail landscape where huge amounts of logistics, security and planning go into making cloned high streets across the country work smoothly and productively.
He says that shopping has "polarised" society, with some people "delighted they don't have to go near a retail outlet, they are happy to get what they need online or just shop for the basics". However, he warns that others are "retailaholics". "They love retail therapy, it's a hobby for some people," he says.
He adds: "I do think the legislation should be considered as a positive for the workforce of large retail organisations. If outlets were open, there would be pressure put on workers to offer to work, to help out their colleagues, to work for double or triple-time rates and told to just think of the money'."
The Catholic Church did not put a formal submission to the parliament on this issue, but "generally agrees with the principles of the bill". The Church of Scotland, however, made an appeal for support for the legislation. Morag Milne, convener of the Kirk's church and society council, believes there is a point to be made about corrosion of family life in this legislation. She sums up her reaction to the idea of shopping as a hobby as "baffling", "sad", "uncaring" and "flat".
"It beats me why people would want to shop on Christmas Day or New Year's Day," she says. "Personally, I couldn't think of anything worse.
"As a Christian, Christmas Day is a religious festival but it goes beyond that: it is a day of rest, not necessarily of religious observance. New Year's Day is the same. It doesn't have any religious connotation but it is a traditional Scottish day of rest."
Milne joins Hogg in her concern about the "chipping away" effect of shops following each other into trading over Christmas and New Year and wants to see the bill succeed. She says: "It is an unhappy situation where you have to legislate to protect special days and make sure people have time with their families, but that's where things are at. It comes within a wider debate on family life.
"It is pretty difficult to have sympathy with these huge companies who are worried about the loss of revenue over a couple of days of trading. I think that is pretty hard to stomach when you see how much is spent in advance. To imagine it's a substantial loss is difficult."
Of the retailers contacted by the Sunday Herald who would be affected by a ban - those with shop floors more than 280sqm, about double the size of a tennis court - none showed any enthusiasm for opening on Christmas Day.
Supermarkets did, however show an interest in having a choice about New Year's Day, with one spokesman observing: "I bet you this year will be the same as last year: that on the 26th and on the 1st there will be lots of really narked customers standing outside peering in, wondering why they can't get in. It happens every year. They'll chap the door and ask the cleaners and security staff why we aren't open."
Tesco's submission to parliament ahead of last week's vote was also indicative of the way supermarkets view any future legislation. Disagreeing with the bill's definition of 280sqm as a big shop, the supermarket giant claimed a large store these days is in fact 25,000 sqft (2300 sqm), otherwise "we will not have a full range of products available for our customers".
A spokeswoman for Debenhams defended the company's decision to open 10 stores, from Inverness to Ayr, for seven hours on January 1, 2007, but refused to provide an employee to be interviewed about how they feel about working on New Year's Day.
She said: "Debenhams opens on January 1 due to customer demand. This is a voluntary working day for all staff and we never have a problem getting enough people to work on this day."
These claims were confirmed by sources who told the Sunday Herald that there are often too many staff willing to work on January 1, and that in years past Debenhams has been quiet on New Year's Day, despite the lure of the sales.
Yet Usdaw, the shop workers' union that worked closely with Whitefield to bring forward her bill, insists their 36,000 Scottish members are in favour of the legislation. One of them is Jackie Martin, who says: "There's no amount of money you could pay me to work either day."
Martin, who did not wish to reveal where she lives or works, adds: "It's mayhem in the run-up to Christmas, you'd think we were feeding the five thousand. You work through your breaks half the time because there is so much to do, you don't take a lunch break. At the same time you are trying to organise your own Christmas, get your own family organised and get presents for them.
"I want to be able to protect those days as a special time that I know I will spend with my family. It really annoys me that we don't have that protection already."
Another Usdaw member, Barry Robertson from Armadale, is looking forward to the "hectic" festive season being over and spending a first Christmas with his wife and baby son as a family. "If employers pushed the New Year's Day opening, there would be an outcry in Scotland. We aren't robots. There is a class issue going on here: the Tories didn't support the bill. But it's the workers who are on the receiving end of that. I'd like to know if those MSPs who voted against the bill would be willing to come and work in parliament at Christmas time."
Whitefield said she had no plans to extend her mission to protect Christmas to other industries such as hospitality or entertainment. She also argued that if shops are widely open when they are normally closed, then public services have to be on duty as well.
David Williams, political officer for Usdaw, says the "snowball effect" will be amplified in years to come if Whitefield's bill fails next year. "There is a larger community under threat that makes us want to push forward with this, it will have a big knock-on effect.
"Our members learned their lesson over Sunday trading. When that started there were promises of extra money, but that was eroded over time. They are promising treble time to work on New Year's Day for 2007 but that cannot be sustained. It's unaffordable. And retail workers will pay the price for it."
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