For many, Boxing Day is a bit of a continuation from Christmas Day, sitting around eating, drinking and flicking between TV and Christmas films. Maybe you'll go out for a Boxing Day stroll with your family, or maybe you'll just stay on the sofa playing with your presents. Some of us might even drive to our in-laws' or relatives' for another round of turkey and all the trimmings.
For others, however, Boxing Day means shopping. Elbows-out, take-all-my-money shopping.
And in a classically British move, it also involves a whole lot of queuing - with many even lining up through the night to make sure they get dibs on all the best stuff. People literally queue up for the privilege of spending their own money.
Credit: SWNS
Credit: North News
Today 13.6 million people will buy in stores and a further 9.2 million will shop online, a study by the Centre for Retail Research found.
"People are so desperate to get the best bargains they won't wait until December 27," its director, Professor Joshua Bamfield, said.
Lured in by prices slashed by up to 90 percent, the frenzy is expected to result in the busiest shopping day ever, with predictions of people spending a total of £4.5 billion ($6 billion) - smashing the £2.6bn ($3.4bn) spent on Black Friday and the £1.67bn ($2.2bn) on the last Saturday before Christmas.
It's a baffling phenomenon that completely divides Brits. Some absolutely love a bargain, while others can't fathom getting up so early on Boxing Day just to shop.
Some reckon if you're going to do it, you might as well just do it from the comfort of your own home, and take advantage of the fact that we can just online shop these days.
For many places the Boxing Day hype started at around 9am, but others got ahead and opened earlier. Many Sainsbury's stores were open at 8am today.
Credit: SWNS
But one the British chains most synonymous with the earliest start is, of course, Next - most stores opened at 5am today, so not long after some of us probably went to bed, full of booze, cheese and Christmas cake. At Trinity shopping centre in Leeds, queues even spanned two floors ahead of the Next shop opening at 6am.
Featured Image Credit: SWNSTopics: Christmas, UK News, Shopping, News, Boxing Day, sainsbury's
