It’s about this time of year that many people all over the world start to think about their families and what they mean to them. Then, based on this subjective value judgment, begin buying their Christmas presents!

Christmas used to mean one of two things weeks of carefully structured, planned Christmas shopping with a well formulated list of presents to buy based on the hints that had been dropped over the last month or so or a panicked rush around the only shops that were still open at six on Christmas eve. If you think that a string bag of logs and a tyre iron were among your best Christmas gift ideas, think again, you need to do just a little more planning. The problem is that with all the commercials that start telling you that Christmas is just around the corner months before the day by the time Christmas finally pitches up you’ve become so deaf to their message that you’ve forgotten all about it. You see an advert for a few gadgetsthat makes you think “Ooh, that looks handy” but that’s about all that passes through out of the general hum of Season’s Greetings. Getting the right things for other people on Jesus’ birthday presents a problem for anyone who doesn’t do much shopping, I myself am guilty of letting it all go until the last minute but you’ve got to put the leg work in, it’s better for everyone in the long run. Remember the rows, the fights, the recriminations and the tears? Remember the slamming doors and the swearing from last Christmas? That was all your fault! If you’d considered what you were buying, listened to the hints they were dropping like carpet bombs in a two month campaign codenamed “Buy Me A Pony” then Christmas would have been like it is in the adverts that you’ve grown deaf to. Instead you end up with a home that’s frostier on the inside than it is out.