My View: Pants to the recession, the stockings are filling up for Christmas

This Christmas, we are all supposed to be reining in the spending, tightening our belts and being canny with the cash.

Well, there's been very little sign of it from what I've seen. Harrogate was full to bursting last weekend, both Saturday and Sunday. I spent hours driving round and round the multi-storey trying to find a parking space. "Don't take the car, walk like I do," advised my husband, with the idiotic innocence of a man who has never had to battle through Primark filling a huge round basket with all the novelty pants, socks and sleepwear that now constitute stocking fillers for our children.

Once upon a time we could bulk up the pillowcases with massive, reasonably-priced selection boxes, but now they are teenagers, they don't want all that chocolate lying around causing excess fat and spots, so pants it is.

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Sadly, the pants don't create anything like the festive bulk that the selection boxes did, although they do bear some pretty obscene messages, especially the underpants, which has introduced another interesting facet to Christmas. I wasn't going to buy my just-turned 13-year-old son the Playboy boxers he was after, because I don't approve of Playboy, but after reading the alternatives – "I'm a Tiger in Bed" and "Feel Free to Handle"– I have decided to relent. What is it with teenage boys and their underpants? His current favourites have "Lucky pants" emblazoned across the waistband, which is of course visible as his jeans are halfway down his bottom. I'm all for fashion, but really ... he was 12 when he got them.

Anyway, there are 10 days to go and so far it's just pants, PJs and socks. The kids will not be impressed. They have said that this year, they want one big present each (a TV for her, a bike for him, and not cheap ones) and so I'm not to worry about the little things. This, I know, is a lie,

hence the pants and sleepwear. I've even bought my son a Union Jack cushion, because it's big, although I'm not entirely sure he's ready for soft furnishings as a Christmas present yet.

One new survey reckons that the average UK gift spend this year will be 624 (though only 522 in Yorkshire), but I don't believe that, not if the heavily-laden shoppers I saw in Harrogate last weekend are anything to go by. I do wonder if we've decided to ignore the recession for a couple of weeks, much to our later cost.

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Women, of course, bear the burden of Christmas shopping, starting earlier than men to spread the load

and also worrying more about post-Christmas debt. And what do we get in return? A Sex and the City 2 DVD, if we are lucky.

Not that this will stop me and all the other mad mothers braving the Christmas stores to bulk up the stockings this year. Which is why I am off to buy more novelty pants.