EVERY year was as utterly baffling as the last.

When I worked in a city centre coffee shop, Boxing Day would begin with a glut of weary women pouring through our glass double doors not long after we'd opened, laden with plump red bag after plump red bag from the Next Boxing Day sale.

It started at what time? 6am? You started queueing at WHAT time? 4am? For clothes? The first time I came across it my mind was boggled. Could. Not. Compute.

After the slew of early morning shoppers, it would be relatively calm as there wasn't an awful lot to come into the city for.

New Year's Day, too, would be eerie on the way into work as every other shop front was shuttered. By lunchtime we would be jam packed with stragglers who had come into the city centre for a look around only to find the place a ghost town. Mostly it was tourists, holiday makers who didn't realise the entire country was also on holiday.

Now, in the city centre, you're spoiled for choice on New Year's Day. No need to stay home when you can head into town.

My memory might be playing tricks, but around that time, I'm sure, Next was a one-off for its early opening hour, which was why the sale created such a legion of annual fans. Not so now.

This year Matalan advertised 4am opening hours for some of its stores. Yesterday at the Intu Victoria Centre in Nottingham, shoppers queued from 2am, their Christmas dinners still halfway along their alimentary canals. That's barely enough time to have digested the cliffhanger from the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special before heading to the shops.

Marks and Spencer got in ahead of the crowd by starting its online sale at 5pm on Christmas Day.

And this is where the annual handwringing about gross consumerism begins but now we have an added tension - the environmental impact.

Of course we've long known that consumerism has a negative environmental impact but this year it can't be ignored, Greta Thunberg has made sure of that.

As Australian bushfires rage out of control, as children strike for climate action and as Donald Trump ties himself in knots over what wind is or isn't, we simply can't justify the unfettered desire for stuff that washes over us come Christmas time.

Yet, as the planet is dying, so too is the high street.

This year Scotland has seen some of the worst sales figures on record with store after store folding and hundreds of jobs being made redundant. Sales yesterday were expected to fall by 12.4 per cent on last year in real life shops, although online sales were expected to rise by 10 per cent.

Boxing Day, for many retailers, remains the busiest in the calendar year and, against such bleak trading conditions, who can grudge them it?

Not everyone making the journey to the high street will be buying an entirely unnecessary set of hair straighteners to replace the nigh-on identical set of hair straighteners they bought last year. Not everyone will be buying their seventh pair of boyfriend jeans, each pair imperceptibly different from the last.

Some people will be buying important household items that they've waited all year to pick up, say. Or treating themselves to an item they otherwise couldn't afford. Something they might not "need" but that makes them feel better.

It's not fair or reasonable to tar all frantic shoppers with one brush.

As long as people are making justifiable choices - without kidding themselves over what they want and what they need - then fine.

For once we could perhaps look to Trump as a positive example. I mean, sort of. Grudgingly and at a push. Asked on Christmas Eve what he'd bought for his wife, the US President said he had only bought her a Christmas card. I'm sure it was the most beautiful and bigliest card ever but still, when you have everything you could possibly need, a card is enough.

Hopefully Melania saw it the same way and wasn't expecting diamonds on Christmas morning. Still, I'm quite sure she's used to being disappointed by her husband.

Friends, this year for the first time, stepped back from gift buying. One of my friends doesn't want presents now she has children; one feels we are too old for Christmas gifts; another feels the time of year is too stressful and so wanted to cut out the added pressure of buying presents.

I love giving and receiving gifts with friends because I feel it's a way of showing thought and care. Yet I can't quibble with any of my now non-gifting buying friends because, ultimately, I have everything I need and I fret over my environmental impact.

Among the annual conversation about how much is too much, we often forget the other people at the heart of our consumer decisions - the retail staff who are giving up festive time with loved ones to facilitate our shopping habits.

Of course, there's a flip side there too. Some will appreciate being able to earn double time, particularly at the most wonderfully expensive time of year. Others won't celebrate Christmas; others might be lonely at the holiday season and enjoy being at work.

Yet, do we really need to have retail staff on hand to serve us at 3am? We don't, of course not. Christmas is as much a time to relax, pause, take stock. We have whittled this down to one shop-free day, meaning retail workers have to sacrifice this precious lull to folk can benefit from 50 per cent off a bath bomb.

We must cut down on our spending habits. The high street will need to change and adapt as this happens.

But for now, couldn't the Boxing Day sales wait until December 27?

An extra day to reflect might even make people stop to think about what they are consuming and why.