Booming sales of Heston's Christmas puddings means bad news for Britain's personal finances.

As the winter nights draw in, we financial journalists are each year treated to a flurry of news offerings from companies warning of how Brits will overspend at Christmas. With Britain's economic prospects entering deep freeze, there have been more of these chilling forecasts than usual.

But forget all that - you don't need an expensively compiled survey to know the 'spend now, pay later' culture is still thriving in a High Street near you. Just take a look at Waitrose.

The supermarket for the well-to-do has also become the choice for the masses at Christmas. It has posted some tasty sales figures in recent years, up 13% for Christmas 2009 versus, say, Tesco with a 5% rise. The trend looks set to gather pace.

Heston Blumenthal's Waitrose Hidden Orange Christmas Pudding, priced at £13.99, has apparently been flying off the shelves. The celebrity chef, now in the employ of Waitrose, is famed for creations such as snail porridge and bacon and eggs ice cream; this one sounds a bit nicer. Here's his blurb:

'The candied orange in the middle of this incredibly moist Christmas pudding makes it very special. As it cooks, the essential oils from the orange peel infuse the nuts and fruit from the inside out producing a wonderfully aromatic Christmas pudding.'

Yum... and yikes. For me, £13.99 for a Christmas pud is a bit rich, yet apparently they are nearly all sold out already. So for another Christmas, consumers will go for the head-in-sand approach.

We conveniently forget that we owe £1.45 trillion as consumers - £50,000 for every worker (up from £38,000 just five years ago) and we officially owe £955bn as taxpayers - or more than £2.2 trillion once everything is lumped in (£76,000 for every worker).

Instead we focus on spend, spend spend. John Lewis, the pricey department store, reported earlier this week that sales are up 12% on a year ago.

So while the government continues to load up its credit card (which has your name on it) splurging on another bail out of banks, via the Irish government this time, British consumers do the same. We won't start tackling the government/taxpayer credit card bill until next year, and even then the trim to spending only means we'll borrow less rather than actually pay anything off.

But the British economy, and our own collective wealth, cannot get back to steady and sustained growth until the debt mountain, which stifles effective investment, is tackled. Yes, consumers collectively paid a little off when interest rates plummeted in the winter of 2008-09. But now we've got used to the new world of low rates, and spending is back. We continue to spend, which largely supports importers, and we put off the inevitable.

The booming sales of an exorbitantly-priced Christmas pud when we're up to our ears in debt captures the flavour of wrong-headed consumer behaviour. If you're now the proud owner of a Heston 'Hidden Orange' pudding, I hope you didn't pay on credit, otherwise it may leave a lingering, bitter taste.

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