Technically, Boxing Day starts and ends on 26th December, the day after Christmas. However, most retailers now tend to merge the Boxing Day sales with the January sales, leading to one extended deals period. Nowadays, most Boxing Day deals will rumble on until mid-January, although some will cut theirs off at New Year's Eve.

Although it is predicted that £4.6billion will be spent in today's sales, this is a 2 per cent decrease compared to last year, according to analysis published by Barclays .