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My eldest daughter Grace (17) came to me the other day to say that she had started her Christmas list and had some ideas of what to buy for her Mum.

She was suggesting some new design of socks that she can wear inside her riding boots, which seem to be a good idea.

If you are one of the unfortunate people that’s followed this blog over a period of years, you will have notices my stance on present buying and tatt buying and all of that kind of stuff has become more and more solid and perhaps even militant as the years have passed. It will be all out this Christmas, I guess.

I almost interrogated Grace on the reason for buying something, for the sake of buying something and whether or not her Mum needed it and whether it would be used or whether it would be one of those things that’s opened on Christmas day that seems like a good idea at the time but looks afterwards like a little bit of an after thought as it lies in a pile beside the sofa in the living room.

Success this Christmas for me would be to receive nothing and for people to feel no sadness or emptiness or regret about the fact that I didn’t get a Christmas present.

The problem with this is that then I get labelled a “scrooge”.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I love Christmas and I love Christmas time because it is the only time of the year that the majority of the country shuts down (this phenomenon is becoming less and less).

I love nights in with the family, watching films and playing games and I love it when we get together, usually on boxing day as a big group and have an amazing time.

My birthday is the 6^th January and it is truly awful, but I love it now and my daughters buy be a trip to the cinema with them as a birthday present, that is the type of present I can handle.

I hate it when I go to the dump and see everybody’s Christmas trees and the plastic s**t from everybody’s houses that they have gotten rid of to make way for their new plastic s**t that comes into their house.

I hate the food that gets chucked away and the fatness and the lethargy and the massive January hangover (and it is a hangover!) that everybody feels after Christmas.

The obsession with present buying for present buying sake. The obsession with collecting bits of crap and then wrapping it up in paper that it didn’t even need to be wrapped in and adding a tag for every single present and then putting a bow around that present and then ripping that off within 4 seconds and then packing it into a bin bag and chucking it into a skip is, obviously, completely insane.

Our reframing of Christmas didn’t happen in a year, it has taken 10 years.

I want to remember Christmas for memories of time spent with my family, for fun that we had and for a feeling that we was together and safe, not for presents.

Blog Post Number - 2165