What did you get for Christmas? And in the sales? Ooh, lovely! And — at the risk of sounding impertinent — HOW did you get them?

In the run-up to Christmas, as I walked down my increasingly desolate high street — now with so many empty shops that it looks like a gap-toothed grimace — I noticed the roads were filled with delivery vans, far more than is usual even for the festive season. Putting together these two facts, it was no surprise to hear this week that the online shopping tipping point may finally have been reached. Boxing Day was the biggest ever online shopping day in etail (‘etail’! I like it!) history. We collectively spent 13 million hours making 96 million visits to shopping websites, up from 80 million in 2010

There have been other signs that point-and-click is taking over from bus-and-town-centre shopping. Booksellers complain about customers coming into their shops, looking through their stock and then buying whatever catches their fancy cheaper from Amazon. Camera shops in the US have grown so frustrated with people coming in and filleting the place for ideas and advice before sauntering back to their home computers to make the actual purchase that some have started imposing ‘explanation fees’.

Experts are predicting that the online shopping trend will continue in the age of austerity, as the stay-athome mentality grows and we consume less overall and search harder for bargains when we do buy — all of which is best served by the internet.

But is shopping really just about acquisition and bargain-hunting? If it were merely something we did to meet our genuine and specific needs (“Kettle broken — must buy new kettle”) as cheaply as possible then yes, there would be nothing to stop online retailing dominating completely. In fact, I’d have expected it to have happened already. If shopping was merely the scratching of the itch for novelty and acquisition, online would and should already be the clear winner. You can buy a lot more in a lot shorter time via computer than you can on foot. I’ve proved this many times, usually late at night, and slightly depressed, on the ever-cheering etsy.com. It does, after all, take a long time to walk to America from south-east London.

"Shopping is a social undertaking"