Let me be one of the first to wish you a Happy Christmas. It's a bit tardy I know, being late October. But for weeks our brains have been manipulated into thinking "Christmas" by a million subliminal hints that it is coming.

Like it or not, the season of "goodwill" is creeping up on us like an express train that's jumped the points.

For months now, restaurants and pubs have been urging us to book early for Christmas. We are made to feel that if we don't have our table booked and our menu choice ordered by midsummer, there'll be no room at the inn.

Argos and Index have had their Christmas catalogues out forever, but surely nothing more perfectly complements a nice gin and tonic in the garden on a hot summer's afternoon than a flick through the seasonal pages crammed with Barbie dolls, ceramic hair straighteners, Black & Decker screw removers and flashing St Christopher necklaces (batteries not included).

Question is: Are you really ready for it? Because it is the time of year that best reveals our true character - are you planner or last-minute merchant?

And there are extremes of both. One chap I know does his Christmas shopping in the January sales and has all his presents wrapped and labelled by the end of the same month - with only 11 months to spare. Phew, cutting it fine, I'd say. Hopefully his choice of presents does not include cheeses.

I wouldn't know because I am not on his Yuletide shopping list. That's probably because I call him tight. He defends his pre-meditated gesture of goodwill by saying he saves money by buying out of season and he does not work up a lather in the run-up to the big day.

He keeps a careful note of what is in the gift wrapped goodies - and how much each one cost - and if any of the lucky recipients dies or falls out of favour, he simply changes the labels around to offer a suitable (and suitably-priced) gift to newfound friends.

There's the other charitable bunch, too. They are the ones who re-wrap presents given to them last year and bequeath them with beautifully-wrapped largesse to you this year. Again, you have to be highly organised to get away with it.

You must make a note of who gave it to you in the first place, then work out if the person you are bestowing it on is likely to cross paths with the original donor. Otherwise: "That's nice, I gave one just like that to Bill last year!" Come on, come clean. I'll bet you've done something like that.

A colleague was recently out enjoying a little retail therapy when she encountered a harassed woman collapsing under a collection of carrier bags that would have given an airport baggage carousel a hernia.

Like Lewis Carroll's white rabbit she was muttering "I'm late, I'm late." Turns out she normally started the Christmas rush weeks earlier and was in a flap because she'd been slack enough to leave it until October. This woman was normally so well organised that long before autumn even thought of shedding a leaf, she had usually set aside one of the precious rooms of her home for Christmas presents only.

Mind you, she wasn't doing too badly this year. She confessed to my bemused colleague that in her mammoth collection of carriers, she had also sorted Hallowe'en and Bonfire Night.

To me there is something obscene about setting off on a Christmas shopping expedition with sun - instead of snowflakes - on your back. It must be the male adventurer in me.

I think Christmas shopping should be done in temperatures close to zero on a dark winter's afternoon, and the dress code should include overcoat, scarf and gloves (gloves, there's a present for Aunt Cynthia, preferably fingerless ones so she can count the pennies she always gave me for Christmas).

Most men, apparently, always leave it until the last minute. Do you know why, girls? It's so we have the time to decipher the unbreakable code of all those subtle hints on what you want for Christmas. "I think they are really nice, those." Or "I've always wanted one of those." The hints are usually delivered, unheard, during the climax of a televised football match or an action movie.

Why, oh why, don't women realise that if they wrote out a list the way the kids do for Santa, it would save an awful lot of heartache? What do you mean, it's not as romantic?

Take the same woman colleague I mentioned earlier. One year she thought she had dropped enough hints to secure the engagement ring she wanted. She spent days feeling and squeezing presents under the tree, or checking the baubles to see if there was a cleverly-disguised ring box.

Come Christmas morning, she feverishly opened all her presents to find that the Bethlehem star of the show was not a one-carat sparkler but a tablecloth.

"A table cloth," she shrieked. "A bloody, rotten tablecloth. I'll show you what to do with a tablecloth..."

Choose carefully this Christmas, or the season of goodwill turns into a tinsel-tarnished battleground.

Updated: 09:46 Tuesday, October 28, 2003