Consider the exchange I had with my mother the other day:

"Mum, what do you want for Christmas?".

"Oh… I don’t know. Don’t worry about me this year."

"Well I have to get you something; any clue as to what you might like that thing to be?"

"Honestly, I don’t want anything. What do you want?"

"Oh. Nothing".

I have been having conversations of this kind with everyone on my present-buying list this year. No one wants anything. We have either all reached an enlightened state of asceticism, or, simply, saturation point. The early market reports confirm it: notwithstanding a bumper day's sales thanks to a car-free West End on Saturday, consumer confidence is at its lowest since 2003 and the High Street chains are predicting a bleak advent. Meanwhile, with the world economy looking wobbly, we are urged to spend as if it were a moral duty.

I should say I am delighted it's Christmas time - but nowadays I look forward to a fine lunch, jolly time spent with the family, bad songs. Everything, in fact, except the presents.

After a thorough grilling, I might admit that I could do with a sieve, which prompts an exchange like this: "A sieve?!" "Yes, a sieve, for sieving things - flour, for example" "Well that’s not very exciting - I’m not getting you a sieve".

Then I may reveal that I am toying with wanting a leather jacket - but then I wonder if I really want this expensive item enough to force someone to buy it for me? I actually find the idea embarrassing.

The worrying truth is that by not really wanting anything, I am being selfish. I am dispatching my loved ones into the fusillade of the high street without a clear objective, thereby obliging them to spend longer thinking about me and increasing the risk that I will receive something I really really don’t want.

This weekend, with only the vaguest idea of what to get for our families, my girlfriend and I set off on just such a sortie. After a nine-hour jaunt, taking in Portobello Road, Kensington High Street and Oxford Street, we returned with a single gift for my little sister. That was all. One female collague informed me that the meagre return was simply because I was "bad at shopping" - but my girlfriend, who's pretty good at it, drew a similar blank. We simply found very little to restore our "consumer confidence".

All this angst is reckoning without the year's largest assignment: buying something for my girlfriend, a task which grows more daunting each year as romantic and financial stakes are raised. Dare I tell her what I really want is a truce? Let the High Street suffer - let's sing carols instead.