Does this make me a grinch? Should I be following suit and discussing with my friends at the local café how I stored a case of champagne in the cupboard for Christmas three months ago?

I mean seriously, it's what, 3 hours of a day? You cook and clean all bloody morning to have family turn up at lunch time. They eat all your food, open their presents and bugger off home again. A week to prepare should be plenty – 24 hours if you don't really care about making it all that special. Make it 48 if you want to avoid the 'last minute madness' where people start to have a weird nervous breakdown that there aren't enough yams (who cares, they're just yams – the supermarket stocks them on other days too).

It really isn't worth getting worked up about, especially not to the point of stress induced anxiety attacks. If it's crap, there's always next year. Trust me on that one, I've had some pretty shockingly hairy Christmas' (police involvement one year with my family).

If you're worried you haven't made it special enough for your kids – meh - if you've tried your hardest, surely, they'll understand and will probably grow up to recognize the effort that was there all along (even if they seem disappointed now).

However, if they cry because you only got them the latest iPhone and iMac, they're spoilt little shitlords and you should disavow any lineage to them immediately.


Your friendly neighbourhood grinch,
Quaid J. Leckey