This is fabulous news for retailers but, by now, I wonder whether everyone is rejoicing as much as the shop owners.
When reality hits home, some families may regret being so generous to each other, or others, but hopefully the vast majority of us will have lived within our Christmas means.
Getting back to lemmings. For years, I thought they were mythical creatures created so we could pick on them for their ridiculous habit of self-destruction. However, I have since invested some time in finding out just what they are.
In short, a lemming is a wee migratory rodent found in the Arctic, that has lovely soft fur, a short tail, can swim, eats leaves and grasses and sometimes pigs out on grubs and larvae.
So a lemming is not too far removed from some people I know, apart from the soft fur and tail. Some humans live in the Arctic, many of us migrate from time to time, most of us can swim, we eat leaves and grasses and a great many of us - mostly in non-western countries, eat a variety of grubs and larvae.
If you doubt the above, take heed of this. We eat the leaves of lettuce, silverbeet, spinach and many more plants we call vegetables and the more daring of us don't turn up our noses at a mouthful or two of huhu grubs.
So, we and lemmings have a lot in common.
While on the subject of diet, there is a fascinating BBC2 programme now showing on New Zealand television. Back In Time For Dinner traces the experiences of the Robshaw family in England who lift the lid on how eating habits have changed in the decades after World War II.
It is a walk down Memory Lane, showing how in the 1950s stay-at-home mums spent about four hours a day preparing a family evening meal. They had to access - in the case of England -fresh vegetables from allotments, prepare the meat, beat butter and sugar in a bowl with an eggbeater to make puddings and shop virtually every day, as few families had a fridge.
Breakfast for many was bread and dripping and leftover meat from the night before. It was all kept in a wood and gauze netting safe, hung from a shady tree in the backyard.
The family's experiment moves to the 1960s with the introduction of breakfast cereals, the arrival of foreign dishes such as spaghetti bolognese, tinned corned beef and spam, and the very first meal in a packet - Vesta beef curry.
By the 1970s, meal preparation times dropped to less than half that of two decades earlier and convenience foods were making huge inroads into the British diet.
Come the 1980s and the Robshaws were exposed to the rise of TV dinners, eating on a tray on their laps, takeaway pizza and microwave ovens. Meal preparation time crashed.
By the 1990s, mothers were making their own pasta at home, supermarkets had nearly wiped out corner stores and meals were accompanied by a nice bottle of red. Into this century and the Robshaws, at last viewing, were introduced to "delicacies" eaten in foreign lands - such as beetles, roasted locust and many other exotic foods.
Great viewing. I wonder whether lemmings will be on the menu next episode?
-Don Farmer is chief reporter at Wairarapa Times Age.
-Ana Apatu is taking a break. Her column will resume on January 12.
