Totally lacking presents

My online deli and gifts site, Cheeses-of-Nazareth.com, is going from strength to strength as we approach the Christmas season. Especially popular with the tighter fisted client is our "Spode-U-Broke" service, a boxful of broken porcelain fragments that we mail to your friends, who open it up, say regretfully, "Those bloody postmen ... what a shame, and it must have cost you a fortune," and then feel obliged to send you something expensive in return.

Also selling well is our talking Les Dennis doll, dressed in seasonal Santa outfit (pull the string and he says: "I don't believe in myself"), but the most popular item is our bumper Christmas hamper, containing a secret ingredient that makes vegetarian cooking taste better (it's called "meat"), and some limited-edition "in memoriam Princess Di" Ferrero Rocher chocolates. Well, the confection and the princess always had so much in common, because both were covered in gold, and both came from France in a box. She is sorely missed.

My site is doing well because, at Christmas, it isn't the thought that counts, it's how much you are seen to spend. We've all experienced the bitter disappointment of unwrapping a present only to find a handknitted sweater or a home-made bookmark when we'd hoped for something mass-produced from M&S or Fortnum's, so I naturally approached Alison Cork's Countdown to Christmas (Five) with some trepidation.

Whenever I hear the phrases "time to get creative" and "... which you can buy from a craft shop", I know that I'm being invited into a world of Blue Peter for slightly retarded adults. And so it proved to be, as this new daily series asked us to get out our PVA glue, our cardboard, and even our sticky-back plastic, so we could make "personal gifts ... that are so cost-effective". Sorry, but if you're over seven and still find such activities enticing, then it's high time you popped along to the "A Life" shop and bought yourself one.

"Making your own Christmas cards is cheaper than what you'll probably pay in the shops," said Alison, as she began yesterday morning's programme, "and it's something that almost anybody can have a go at." (So is playing the bagpipes, but that doesn't mean you should.) Next, she advised us on the best way to acquire a Christmas tree (apparently, you can purchase them in shops), and recommended those "that have good needle retention", such as the Scots pine, the blue spruce and the junkie vagrant (or did I imagine that last one?).

Moments later, designer Kathryn Rayward was showing us how to decorate the tree, and telling us: "I rather like this random arrangement," and I thought of the traditional Yuletide scene chez Lewis-Smith, where we forego the Christmas tree in favour of a lava-tree. Yes, what could be more festive than an old disused Sankey bog, festooned with toilet-paper chains and bedecked in twinkly lights, with an effigy of Michael Barrymore dangling from the ball cock? Well, we prefer a fairy to a star.

The only aspect of Christmas that really must be home-made is the food, and fortunately the programme excelled itself in this regard. As someone who once spent Christmas morning walking around the kitchen with my foot stuck up the tradesman's entrance of a semi-defrosted 20lb turkey, I was delighted to see Ed Baines (from the UK Food channel's Good Food Live - consistently the best food programme on television at present) suggesting some smaller alternative birds, such as quail with a shot of grappa, or pheasant with a shot of... well, lead shot, I suppose.

But we'll doubtless all still end up eating turkey on Christmas Day, simply because there are no alternatives in ritual. Though I've often been astonished by our curious national addiction to cold turkey, and wondered what would happen if we all attempted to kick the cold turkey habit - would the whole of Britain go cold turkey?

"Sometimes, less is more," said Alison, as she stuck yet more peacock feathers on to yet another piece of cardboard. "If I had more time, I'd build it up even further," she added, and that contradiction was typical of the programme's air of earnest Yuletide confusion.

Ultimately, Christmas isn' t about innovation, it's about the reassuring repetition of long-established rituals, such as getting together in a confined space for several days with people who don't like you, and biting into puddings in which small coins have been cunningly secreted (a tradition surely dreamed up by orthodontists).

There's also the tradition of suicide, of course, because Christmas is a dangerous time for many people, as the whole world seemingly transforms itself into a vast communal hokey cokey, from which they alone are excluded.

Furthermore, traffic gets worse, shops are filled with disgruntled employees and habitually abstemious office girls unwisely accept a glass or two of Bailey's, and are suddenly discovered underneath the under-manager in the stationery cupboard being anything but stationary.

Ah well, it's coming, and there's nothing we can do to stop it. So be mindful of leaving Christmas as you would wish to find it. Your cooperation is appreciated.