Only 80 shopping days to Easter, consumer groups warn

Consumer groups have this week issued a stark warning to shoppers caught up in the pre-Xmas spendfest: there are only EIGHTY shopping days left until Easter 2003.

"The fact of the matter is that many people simply do not make any financial provision for Easter," warned a grim-faced representative of the Association of British Retailers. "Tragically, many people are left totally potless by January, a fact which can have terrible consequences by Valentine's Day, the first significant retail festival of the year."

Indeed, many British families now struggle to raise the £1000 needed for a truly successful Easter and, with shops looking to augment the number of days per year on which expensive gifts are traditionally exchanged, they face an increasingly uphill struggle to fulfil their social obligations.

"Our records show that the ancient Egyptians exchanged gold in huge quantities on 17 January," one excited jeweller told The Rockall Times, while a manufacturer of household appliances added that the British had for some time failed to commemorate the Assyrian god of the harvest by giving loved ones gas ovens and extractor hoods on 15 September.

Some experts have, however, asserted that the traditional struggle to find enough cash to provide traditional gifts is itself part of the tradition. "Every year, Anglo Saxons peasants would go cap-in-hand to their masters, asking for cærrð," an expert in the commercial exploitation of significant dates told us. "By the process of cærrð — from which we get our modern word 'credit' — they would be provided with widescreen televisions, portable foot spas and aftershave; all of the essential ingredients of a proper Xmas. Naturally, they had to work all of the next year to pay for these items, usually at crippling rates of interest. And don't imagine that you could simply opt out of the cærrð system. A failure to properly celebrate the birth of Christ by the dissemination of expensive gifts was a crime punishable by ostracism and banishment, as it still is today."

Meanwhile, those parents with the foresight to plan ahead are advised to stock up on next Easter's must-have gifts for the kids: Nike trainers, Gameboy Advance and Harry Potter's Magic Flying Egg (batteries not included), not forgetting to leave a little in the purse for Teenage Daughter Day on 5 May, Love Your Pet Day on 16 July and the time-honoured exchange of Scud missiles on 9/11.