While Black Friday was a huge success in America, Europe was not so enthusiastic

Americans are half way through their greatest shopping period – the run from Black Friday to Cyber Monday – while for Britons it has been pretty much a normal weekend, besides the mass panic and resulting Twitter storm on one of the country’s busiest shopping streets. But this was nothing to do with bargains, and otherwise there were few queues at the shops despite the earnest efforts of retailers to pump things up. What’s up?

There is one simple point and let’s get it out of the way. It would be pretty odd if the combination of the gloom heaped on the British consumer by commentators on Brexit and the squeeze on real incomes from inflation at 3 per cent had not dampened down animal spirits a bit. In any case the consumer has up to now been the driving force behind the recovery, and budgets have become extended.

In the US, by contrast, the long boom continues, interest rates will climb only slowly and real incomes are at last rising – so consumer confidence remains high. Bumpy politics have not affected spending habits – and why should they?

But this is not just about economics. It is about culture. Look at Latin America. It too has seen a spending boom, even in countries where you might expect the consumer to be struggling. In continental Europe, by contrast, there has been a pretty muted response. Retailers in France tried to talk up Black Friday, and there seems to have been a fair bit of additional spending, but in Germany and Italy the day has been notable for something else. Amazon workers went on strike.

The retailers were naturally enthusiastic. Here is Black Friday Germany urging buyers to go for the hundreds of deals and bargains that they can see in an instant: “Hier bei Black-Friday.de findest du hunderte Black Friday Deals und Schnäppchen aus Deutschland auf einen Blick.” (It sounds better in German, doesn’t it?)

But Amazon workers picketed several depots on the grounds that its work practices endangered the health of employees. The Verdi union wants Amazon to change its practices so that it offers “gute und gesunde arbeit” (good and healthy work) rather than the high-pressure environment the union claims it does at the moment.

We will see where this goes, but meanwhile note one thing: Germany is Amazon’s second-biggest market after the US.

Black Friday is over but Cyber Monday is ahead. The idea here was to extend the shopping holiday with an online day. Friday was the bridge between Thanksgiving and the weekend, when people had time to go to the shops – though actually it has become an online event too. But if you didn’t have time to shop on the Friday, or had better things to do, then you need not lose out. There are bargains still to be had.

And indeed there are. But does the whole palaver of a weekend dedicated to shopping really make sense in the age of online distribution and price comparisons? We all know why this time of year should be a time when people give each other presents: that there should be some kind of winter festival goes back to prehistoric times, and gifts are a part of the festival. In most of Europe the gift-giving has been associated with Christmas, with the post-Christmas sales held to clear out the stuff that had not been sold. In the US Thanksgiving takes the place of Christmas, and it looks a bit as though Singles Day in China is doing the same.

Now, however, you don’t need to shop on a particular day to get a good price. Hang around, use search engines to discover where the best prices are anywhere in the world, and buy when and where there is a genuinely good deal. This is not to say that Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Singles Day and the like are endangered species. I’m sure the retailers will be clever enough to keep them going for many years to come. People like buying things, something that communism never quite took on board. But I suspect that the gradual shift from people buying objects to buying services will change the nature of these festivals. There will still be a celebration. But the emphasis will be more on buying experiences, less on buying stuff.