Economic rage is fashionable amongst politicians. For Ed Miliband, in particular, it seems it might soon be easier to list the things he does not want to price cap than those he does. Mention energy prices, water prices, rents, bank salaries, payday loans interest rates and many other things and someone will want to cap them.

Yet there is rarely, if ever, any discussion of containing or regulating the costs of the two great economic tyrants of our age: Christmas and weddings.

Weddings are fabulously expensive. Brides Magazine estimates the average cost of a wedding now at £24,716. Delaying marrying in cohabitation so as to save up for a “real wedding” is increasingly common. According to Marriage Foundation research, half of men and two fifths of women who cohabit say the cost of the wedding is one of the main reasons they cohabit. That’s right. Many folk are not cohabiting because they are “seeing whether they are compatible” or because they “don’t feel ready to commit” or because they have some ideological objection to “tradition”. They would be perfectly happy to make a public exchange of vows, prudently making explicit what they consider are their mutual commitments and obligations. But they do not do so because they are delaying whilst they save up £25,000 to afford a wedding.

Many politicians claim that they want to support marriage, including through the tax system. Yet whilst they propose nugatory amounts of support through the tax or benefits system of a few dozens or hundreds of pounds, they totally ignore the woolly mammoth crammed into the corner of the room — the £25,000 average cost of a wedding.

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If ever there were a market ripe for government interference for a social purpose, weddings must be it. A market in which folk pay £2,000 and more to buy a dress they’ll wear once in their entire lives and then leave to go mouldy in the corner of the wardrobe. A market in which telling anyone — flower-arrangers, caterers, make-up, you name it — that you are buying for a wedding means an instant tripling (or is it more?) of the price. A market in which seeking to buy stuff cheaply is positively frowned upon. “It’s supposed to be absurdly and unnecessarily expensive — it’s for a wedding!”

Social commentators criticise the morality of corporate tax avoiders or those that sell distressed stocks short. They criticise the ostentation of the wealthy in other matters. Even endeavours like the space programme are attacked as a waste of money in a world of hunger. But as soon as it’s a wedding any sort of excess becomes fine — no, mandatory. Why do those of us with more money not feel under any obligation to set a good example for those on lower incomes in this area? Why do we not have more modest affairs and boast of how little we spent whilst still having a splendid time? We’d manage perfectly fine to have great fun at a New Year’s party or a Christmas bash with 50 or more friends and family without spending £25,000. Why must we be so destructively extravagant at our weddings, dragging the poor into pointless debt and causing them to delay life progress whilst they try to keep up with us?

Yet Christmas, though by no means as damaging as weddings, is not an economic innocent here, either. The Money Advice Service estimates that, this year, 1.4 million Britons will take out payday loans to funds Christmas, borrowing an average of £530. Those who like to imagine themselves sophisticated moral arbiters attempt to offer helpful moral censure to those on low incomes over all kinds of topics — smoking, drinking, obesity, having children one cannot afford, becoming overly dependent upon benefits. Indeed, a certain degree of such censure can, in its way, provide a helpful pressure upon all of us to behave well (assuming it does not go too far).

Yet where do we hear the censure for becoming over-indebted to pay for Christmas? This is not a marginal issue. Neither is it a matter of killjoy Scroogedom. In many categorisations of the sources of debt for those in financial distress, loans originally taken out to fund Christmas are important enough to have their own category.

Again, like weddings, those on lower incomes feel they must spend excessively on Christmas because doing so has become normalised as a way of sharing in the normality of the middle classes. Yet we can surely have a great deal of jolly fun with family and friends without going overboard in the way that has become normalised in our age?

There is a Family Guy episode in which Christmas presents are cancelled one year because, worn out by the ever-increasing demands of the modern age, Santa is taken ill. To restore him to health, everyone agrees that having just one gift at Christmas should be enough. I’m not necessarily proposing we go quite that far, but the principle that we should contain ourselves — not for Santa; not even so that we can focus upon the true religious element of Christmas (though that wouldn’t be a bad idea); but so as not to drag those who can less well afford it into unnecessary debt.

If we, in the more affluent classes, cannot self-discipline our weddings and Christmas expenditure, perhaps one day it might fall to politicians to intervene to save us from ourselves. I’m sure their fingers are itching at the thought already…

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