Retail Week's 12 days of Christmas: 12 truths every retailer knows at Christmas

1. It will be your fault if there’s no Frozen Princess Doll left five minutes before closing time on December 24.

2. You’ll be working over Christmas while all of your friends and family get a week off.

3. The self-scan tills will need at least three members of staff each to make sure they don’t break.

4. A celebrity endorsed product will sell out and create its own black market.

In past years, Nigella’s goose fat and Heston’s Christmas pudding have both sold out and turned up on eBay for ten times their retail price.

5. Shop-floor staff will hear Jona Lewie’s ‘Stop the Cavalry’ an average of 883.2 times each over the Christmas period.

6. Someone’s Christmas ad will always cause offence.

It might be Sainsbury’s turn this year after some viewers took offence to its use of a First World War story, but this time last year Asda was accused of being sexist, and in 2011 Shop Direct was reviled for revealing Santa doesn’t exist, attracting over 450 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority.

7. Most consumer magazines will publish a Christmas taste test revealing Morrison’s Christmas pudding is better than Fortnum & Mason’s.

8. You have been thinking about Christmas since last January.

9. You have looked into riot training to help staff cope with Black Friday.

10. You eat mince pies in July. 

11. Everyone expects an answer to the most minor queries within ten seconds on Twitter.

12. And despite all the predictions and expectations for the peak period, retailers only ever really know one thing – Christmas comes on December 25 and other than that, no one really knows what will happen.