Naughty or nice?

By Steve Sharp

The origins of giving gifts at Christmas began with The Three Wise Men bringing the infant Jesus presents, but what with the price of gold now touching fifteen hundred quid an ounce, frankincense 500 dollars a pound, and myrrh a massive four thousand, The Magi are a hard act to follow.

If you do want to splash out traditionally however The Royal Mint are offering a five-ounce Year of the Tiger 2022 coin for a mere £12,500.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have stretched from days to weeks as retailers everywhere try to get us to join in with a spending frenzy, which somehow feels at odds what’s happening in the world, and with our own economy.

Interviewed this week, Co-op boss Shirine Khourey-Haq has restricted her twin six-year-old daughters to one present each and they have asked respectively for a Barbie and Paw Patrol toy. Speaking to The Sunday Times she admitted previously giving her daughters embarrassing quantities of gifts which just feels morally unjustified in the current climate.

Putting the Co-op’s money where her mouth is she scrapped plans for a £15m advertising campaign instead donating money and goods to a scheme called Your Local Pantry which helps struggling families with food at subsidised prices.

My earliest recollection of Christmas presents is of a stocking stuffed with sweets, socks and mandarin oranges, a comic annual and a selection box of chocolate bars. It seemed like enough.

In my teens I remember my parents saving to buy me a Roberts transistor radio, before they were retro, and another year a Dansette record player.

The other day my youngest daughter, who is nineteen and thankfully not at all materialistic, asked me if I could let her have a copy of my Christmas list. I told her that the last time I wrote one of those was in the sixties and most of the items were ignored by Santa. She accepted my explanation with little more than a shrug.

When a 45-year-old friend told my wife she had asked for a recording headset for Christmas, she asked in reply “who did you write to at your age?” Seems it was her mum!

And talking of mums, my New Zealand mother-in-law has an agreement with friends and colleagues to all buy their gifts from charity shops, so that if it is not liked you can secretly take it back to be sold again.

Which seems to be both naughty and nice!

Steve