Those who would like to know what is really going on in this blessed country, and who quite rightly choose not to be led astray by the many opinion leaders who, for reasons they know best, choose to give one hue or another to the current reality, have only their personal impressions to go by. Until, that is, such a time when official figures tell all, as they usually do but at some distance.

The past two weeks of world hiatus, known as Christmas, are now almost over. On the micro, that is the personal side, these would have been an almost non-stop whirl of parties, eating, meeting, drinking sessions for many. Perhaps the social networks do not really portray what is going on with our people, and perhaps they do: what they showed was people having a good time. Behind the scenes, but this is the private sphere, one glimpses signs of families breaking up, new families being created, an amazing panoply of extended families being extended even more, and so on.

Just as they do after the Trade Fair, after Christmas, etc, shop owners have been loudly complaining they did not do so well, especially restaurant owners who seem to expect Christmas to give them the profits the rest of the year doesn’t.

Those who would want to investigate can refer back to past issues of newspapers (today mostly online) and they will find that roughly the same complaints are to be heard every year, even in years we now acknowledge to have been boom years. For 10 shops that close down, another 20 open – and this is one very cogent reason why shop owners complain they did not have good business.

Furthermore, today people can order things on the Internet. And people can also shop abroad where they may find that the same item costs rather less than it would cost here.

It has been commented on some blogs that if shop owners were to see that their shop assistants are more shopper-friendly and smile some more, they would perhaps get more sales. And for all the talk about recession, when shops full of people close their doors and throw everybody out just because it’s closing time, well, that’s nothing short of madness.

There have been sales in Malta, some even before Christmas, but the public reaction to that seems to have been rather tepid. What a far cry from Britain where sales had a completely different resonance.

There was an extraordinary 12.8 per cent leap in retail sales in the last week of 2008 compared with the same week in 2007, according to Experian, a market monitor. The Economist reported: “In the city centre, Poundland is heaving with post-Christmas bargain hunters snapping up everything from underwear to shampoo, some of it for even less than the promised £1. Elsewhere in Leeds brightly coloured sale signs fill shop windows as varied as Ann Summers, a racy lingerie chain, and Harvey Nichols, a pricey department store.

“For most on the high street, it has been a grim few months, and Leeds is no exception. Next door to Poundland, the Officers Club, a men’s fashion chain which recently called in administrators, is selling dinner jackets for less than the price of a night out (£20.80 to be exact) and slashing 60 per cent off much else. Nearby, a sports outfitter and greetings-card shop are both holding closing-down sales, with 75 per cent off. A branch of Zavvi, a music and video store that has also collapsed, is handling queues 20 people deep at its tills as shoppers rush to snap up discounted £2.99 albums and to spend gift vouchers while they can.”

Those were discounts created out of desperation as retailers struggled to make money, any money, before the cull expected around the middle of this month. As our correspondent Mike Carabott says in today’s issue, that is good news for the Maltese consumer, whose euro now goes further, but bad news for our tourism.

Again The Economist: “Conditions will be particularly tough for mid-size retail chains, with 100 to 250 branches, because few of them have the financial resources to tide them over. Sellers of discretionary goods, such as jewellery and gifts, and retailers of household furniture will face the biggest drought. Smaller high-street shops are under threat from all sides: their biggest VAT (value-added tax) bill comes at the end of January; many are reeling from their quarterly rent bill due at the end of December; in April they will be hit by a five per cent rise in business rates; and the falling pound has increased the cost of imported goods. Banks feel unable to tide companies over unless they have a convincing business plan – hard in such an unforgiving economic climate.”

For all the local doomsayers, there is simply no comparison between such a situation in the UK and the one here. The sales here were not born of such desperation.

The truth is, as can be seen at ground level, that people did keep a firm grip on their wallets in expectation of the coming electricity bills. On wider issues, such as the purchase of houses and cars, they seem to have postponed any such decisions. As for eating out, people may have been scared by the e100 per person price tags or above, and many seem to have chosen house parties (where from all available evidence there were no inhibitions as regards smoking or drinking one would find in bars). Yet people still went out. And they seem to have had a good time. As for Christmas shopping, it is true that up to the Saturday before Christmas Valletta and other shopping centres were rather short of customers. But the final week saw heaving crowds almost everywhere. People may have scaled down the level of their purchases to cope with an expected higher expenditure on electricity, but buy they did, nevertheless.

Some would even seem to draw conclusions from the lower money pledged to L-Istrina and to the two parties, although RTK’s collection for Dar tal-Providenza seems to have been bigger this year. However, one must remember that people naturally contribute more to the party of their choice on the eve of a national election than at any other time.

As Samuel Brittan said: “The most alarming feature at present is the fatalistic public mood. The slump is being discussed as if it were a natural catastrophe like the arrival of the comet that destroyed the dinosaurs. All the popular talk is of retrenchment, cutting down and spartan savings of all kinds. It should not take a genius to appreciate that such activities can only make the situation worse and aggravate a downward vicious spiral.”

And that is about beleaguered Britain, let alone Malta.

Back to Christmas shopping. While some were turning away potential customers by closing when the shop was full of people, or by having shop assistants that were rude and arrogant to clients, others, from prime brands to corner pizza shops, were opening early and closing late and giving good service. What this country really, really needs is to give more opportunities to the latter and to stop bailing out the former. Those who want to work, but really want to work, must be given all help to do so.

Or as President Franklin Roosevelt said: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”