DECK the halls with boughs of holly? Not likely.

We won't be having truck with any cheap stuff like that this Christmas.

As usual, we'll be splashing out a small fortune on baubles, tinsel, the tree and other such dust-gatherers this Christmas.

According to Geoff Mountjoy, regional director of the South and West Legal Services Commission, families on an average income will be spending £564 on glitzy decorations, food, booze and the like for Christmas Day alone.

And that's before we start on the presents.

Which means that come January Mr Mountjoy and his colleagues will be kept very busy helping thousands of people to find ways of paying off their credit card bills before the bailiffs come round.

Which prompts the question, are we all stark raving mad?

Christmas catalogues began arriving through my letterbox in September.

So far I have resisted the lure of velvet stockings lavishly embossed with Santas embroidered in red and silver thread.

Silver-plated gearstick knobs engraved with my nearest and dearest's initials.

Porcelain mugs painted with tasteless designs, also personalised with family names.

Candles by the thousand.

Flashing fairy lights that are likely to provoke attacks of migraine or epilepsy.

Red tablecloths adorned with reindeer.

Fancy Christmas card holders.

Expensive hampers containing such so-called delights as tinned Christmas cake, whisky flavoured marmalade and strange pickles my family would never be likely to eat.

A battery-powered miniature Christmas tree that plays Jingle Bells and chortles Happy Christmas at anyone who's misguided enough to press the "on" button. (It could drive you nuts by Boxing Day! ) And so on an so on.

It's doubtful that any of this kind of stuff is going to make us happier as we over-eat and over-drink our way through the 12 days of Yuletide.

And there's just one question to be answered by anyone who says they're hard up but determined to give the kids a good Christmas.

Is it really impossible for 10-year olds to be happy if Santa doesn't arrive with a bike, plus an iPod, plus a fancy mobile phone that takes pictures, plus all the other electronic gadgets to which they've taken a fancy?

Now I'm awaiting the usual magazine articles on how to cope with the overwork, the shopping, the cooking and the present wrapping.

Not to mention the stress of having to put up with the visiting inlaws and drunken Uncle Joe.

Christmas really shouldn't be like this.

It certainly oughtn't to be a festival of consumerism in which countless families get into serious debt trying to celebrate as lavishly as the free-spenders next door.

Hot stuff in the jungle. . .

THERE are growing and unsurprising suspicions that people don't watch I'm A Celebrity to see so-called stars eating spiders and gruesome grubs. They do it to see who is making out with whom.

As former EastEnders actor Marc Bannerman, 34, pictured, was given the boot at the weekend his girlfriend back home, year-old Sarah Matravers, was wailing that the show had ruined her life because Bannerman appeared to have fallen for his fellow outback star Cerys Matthews, 38, a Welsh singer.

Not so. The show hasn't wrecked Ms Matravers's future. If anybody has, Bannerman has.

He and Ms Matthews can hardly have failed to realise that a spot of jungle love has done wonders for the careers of certain other temporary residents of the outback. Jordan and Peter Andre to name two.

However, the pair of them might, just might, have miscalculated.

2:17pm Wednesday 28th November 2007

Print

Email this