SOMEONE once said that Christmas is just like a day in the office – you do all the work and the fat man in the suit gets all the credit.

There’s no doubt, of course, that trudging round shops, hands being slowly sawn through by the weight of carrier bags; spending hours hunched over a computer vainly surfing the internet for inspiration for that elusive one-off special present, and fighting the supermarket hordes for sprouts even though no one in your household likes them, is bloody hard work that can take the edge off your already fragile Christmas spirit.

And Scrooge-like, there’s no doubt too that the ghosts of Christmas past colour how you want your present Christmas to be – you either want to avoid the horror stories involving warring families of yesteryear, or your memories are so magical that you strive to emulate or even better them. Either way, it creates added pressure so that by time the Queen’s Speech comes round you’re comatose with a surfeit of booze to hide the exhaustion.

Add to that the usual breakdown of taste and intelligence when dads don’t care how ridiculous they look or sound wearing ties adorned with silken Christmas puddings and Santa socks with elfin bells on in the hope that mums will be wantonly amused by their “gift” of horrendously tarty too-small underwear they vainly hope she'll strut her stuff in at bedtime on Christmas night. Never mind that she’s completely knackered and could sleep the sleep of the dead… Or they go the other way and buy something very useful in the shape of a gift-wrapped vacuum cleaner designed to get into all the nooks and crannies to obliterate all that drifting Christmas tinsel come Twelfth Night. Why couldn’t you get me something personal, she cries? I have, he says, you’re the only one that’ll be using it… Then there’s the screaming kid who loves his new Nerf gun, but is screaming because he can’t use it for Someone – mum, naturally – forgot to buy in a mammoth supply of batteries as she was too busy frantically trying to work out how many sprouts she needed to go round 14 people, even though none of them like them anyway.

Not to mention tearing her hair out while devising the logistics required for ramming a monster turkey into what might as well be a dolls’ house oven while browning the roasties without any oven space (easy-peasy – chop the legs off, part roast the spuds the night before and finish them off while the turkey’s resting before carving).

Then there’s the cottage industry-like wrapping of presents that makes the family dining table look like an infant school craft bench only to find, in this age of re-cycling, that you’ve given last year’s really horrible jumper/scarf/gloves/smellies back to the person who gave them to you in the first place. And you only know because their askance reaction is like a Christmas film repeat because you had exactly the same expression on your face when you opened their parcel the year before. Talk about de ja vue… All this is pretty clichéd of course, but it has to be said, every cliché has a grain of truth in them. But in the hurly-burly of trying to “put on a good Christmas” we often forget what it’s supposed to be all about.

Whether you’re religious or not it’s supposed to be a time of giving and sharing, a moment of re-affirming all that’s special among family and friends, a chance to put away the irritation we feel with recalcitrant aunts or wandering-hands uncles, an annual opportunity to let our hair down and feast in fun and laughter.

That’s for those of us fortunate enough to have family and friends we want to spend Christmas with. There are very many people out there who will be lonely and alone this weekend, some who will spend it lying prone in a hospital bed, others who will be foregoing Christmas dinner and the festivities in favour of a bedside vigil for loved ones who are sick, injured or dying. Perhaps as we’re manically unwrapping our presents from beneath the tree, giddily pulling crackers and toasting our nearest and dearest, stuffing ourselves with plum pudding, and lying snoozily on the sofa watching yet another re-run of Love Actually, we should think of them, count our blessings and be thankful for what we have, new vacuum cleaner and all.

Have a happy Christmas and may it be everything you wish it to be.