'Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.' (A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens)

Christmas is traditionally the biggest family holiday of the year, but it seems that a loophole in legislation protecting workers' rights to time off means that many more than previously will be working on December 25th this year.

A month ago it was reported that more than 300 extra-large supermarkets will be open on Boxing Day, compared with just a handful two years ago. Asked about this last month by the Daily Telegraph, I observed, 'In this increasingly economic-driven society, where time is costed but not valued, it's sad that yet another bank holiday – when family and friends should be spending time together – has been undermined. It seems another way to make more profit and take staff away from their families.'

Now it transpires that staff are being heavily leaned on to work behind closed doors on the 25th ready for the surge of customers on Boxing Day. No doubt it will be the most vulnerable in society who feel the pressure most acutely. After all, 26 percent of single working mothers and 30 percent of employees with a gross annual household income of less than £24,000 work shifts, compared with just 16 percent of employed mothers who are married or have a partner and 18 percent of employees with an annual household income of £24,000 and over. Furthermore, children in 1.34 million families already have at least one parent working on both days of the weekend, with around a quarter of mothers and a third of fathers having to work on Sundays. How many more children will be deprived of one of both of their parents this Christmas? At the other end of the age spectrum, there are already half a million pensioners who spend Christmas Day alone – how many more will not get to spend the day with their grown-up children this year?

Today's report from the Young Foundation Sinking and Swimming: understanding Britain's unmet needs observes that people need a host of things in order to flourish: 'they need to have meaningful relationships with others, social contact and social support; they need to feel competent and capable in their environment; and they need to have choices and options about how they live and have some control over their environment.' This latest cultural shift simply reinforces their observation that 'Loneliness and a lack of social networks have become a stark feature of a more individualistic society.'

So have the employers who are making their staff work on Boxing Day and Christmas Day given any thought to the health and wellbeing of their staff and their families, or do they only care about short-term profits and getting ahead of the competition?

The supermarkets might do well to recall research showing that the likelihood of sickness in companies that require staff to work on Saturdays and Sundays is 1.3 times greater than in companies that do not require staff to work at the weekend. They (and we) might do well to heed the warning of the Dickens' ghost of Jacob Marley:

'Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business! At this time of the rolling year, I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!'

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