I'm John Batchel with my colleague Joseph Sternberg. He is a member of the editorial board of the

Wall Street Journal. He's in London. He writes political economics. And it's time to talk Charles

Dickens and Scrooge and Christmas in London. I've never been there for the whole of it, Joseph.

I passed through once on my way from

Scotland in the year of the oil embargo, so it was rather dim. The lights were not lit up.

How does London look now here in the beginning of December? I think, you know, this is always a

very festive time of year for London, and they do a great show with the decorations and, you know, tourist centers like Covent Carton and all of the stores are, you know, decked out as exactly as you would expect.

So when you walk around, one of the things that I'm noticing as I'm living here is there's still a lot of signs of economic unease.

You know, a lot of the holiday stuff in the supermarket seems to be discounted in one way or another

is if they're afraid that people aren't going to splash out for that extra package of

mince pies, which is the traditional sweet treat in an English Christmas.

So I think that, you know, you do have these little pangs where you kind of wonder, as we look

back on the holiday season, how is it going to have been economically?

And, you know, how are people feeling right now?

Because I'm not sure that the country is in a particularly good mood.

But, you know, people also have their friends and

their families, and so they will find ways to be festive as best they can during the season.

And I think you do often see a lot of that, too. The day after Christmas is Boxing Day.

That's the day of exchanging gifts. Does that change the retail presentation in any

fashion or is it just 24 hours later you get toys? What's been interesting over the 10 years

that I've lived in the UK is that Black Friday has become a real thing over here, even though

Thanksgiving is not a holiday outside of the U.S. So everyone else in the world has imported American shopping habits, but not the

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