If you're sick of Christmas commercialisation, try focusing on those less fortunate

So Christmas is here again; that brief time each year when, for a few short weeks, we put away our petty enmities, forgive our neighbours their trespasses, and concentrate instead on the more important things in life, such as trying to work out which of the 250 pea bulbs on our tree lights is the dud one that’s preventing the system from working. “Good King Wences last looked out”, or so we used to sing – and during the next few weeks our neighbourhoods and local communities will be making their own efforts to crowbar us off our sofas and out into the streets. Garish angels picked out in fairy lights will adorn our town centres, local parks will twinkle with gaily decorated trees, and hastily convened Christmas markets will tempt us with cups of scalding Glühwein, a meeting with Santa, or the chance to snaffle that unexpected present with which to delight our friends and relatives. But as Robert Burns was always reminding us, “The best laid plans o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley” – as was discovered a week or two back by the residents of Swansea. Instead of the promised “Grand Christmas procession” advertised by the city council, people lining the streets to view this extravaganza were nonplussed to find the parade consisting of three desultory floats. Indeed, the whole shebang took only six minutes to pass by. Worse still, some folk who’d driven into the centre to witness it returned to their vehicles to discover they’d been issued with parking tickets. Happy Christmas everyone.

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But this is only the latest of many such festive debacles that seem to proliferate around this time. A few years ago a “German–style Christmas market” in the Worcestershire town of Redditch attracted only three stalls (selling in turn wreaths, doughnuts and beefburgers, in case you were wondering), while a similarly seasonal event described by the organisers as a “Magical winter wonderland” in Hampshire was shut down by local authorities after complaints that it was nothing more than a sodden field with a Nativity scene, a plastic polar bear and a pack of wolves looking so thoroughly cheesed-off that several visitors alerted the RSPCA. But it’s not just bungling councillors (as opposed to wonderful ones) and greedy entrepreneurs who seem to take leave of their senses at the festive season. Christmas is, after all, big business, and such is the commercial frenzy that descends on us all that items and attractions we wouldn’t normally dream of investing in at any other time of the year exert an irresistible influence over us the moment we hear a snatch of Bing Crosby. You only have to look at the cornucopia of clobber on offer in shops to see it in action. In recent years I’ve been given all manner of pointless presents by normally sane individuals, among them interlocking gloves for married couples called Smittens and tubs of reindeer pâté. What’s more, I too have fallen for the seasonal madness. Some years ago I was persuaded to reward the hospitality of some friends I was staying with throughout the festivities by buying them an animatronic rubber fish. Mounted on a faux-wood board and powered by tiny batteries, Big Mouth Billy the Bass sang an endless loop of the ditty Don’t Worry, Be Happy, its head and tail flapping simultaneously in time to the music as it did so. I can only assure you it seemed an absolute hoot in the shop. But its presentation on Christmas morning was received with little more than a brittle smile. Far from giving it pride of place above their mantelpiece, my hosts squirreled it away before it had completed a single verse. Just as well too, for had I asked them where they intended to put it, I might have got more than I bargained for.

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So before we all take leave of our senses once more, let’s just take a deep breath and reflect on what the season is really about. The knack of enjoying a truly memorable Christmas is surely not to be found in filling our boots with tawdry tat and threadbare fun, but in nourishing human interaction with loved ones and reaching out to others less fortunate than ourselves. This Christmas Day I’ll be doing something I’ve often threatened, but so far always failed to deliver – namely, rolling up my sleeves and washing up the pots at a local homeless shelter in north London (don’t worry, I wouldn’t inflict my cooking skills on my worst enemy). What’s more, I’m looking forward to it. And if I can get through the holidays without a novelty loo roll or a plastic polar bear, I will count myself blessed indeed. Michael Simkins is an actor and author