BAH. HUMBUG

It may seem Scrooge-like but, as overconsumption runs wild, refusing to buy pointless Christmas presents is more radical political act than cost-cutting exercise, argues Helen Coffey

- Helen Coffey

Picture the scene. It's the office Secret Santa, an annual tradition beloved by precisely no one, but one that employees nevertheless feel compelled to participate in each December as if it were a contractual obligation. Workers sit around awkwardly opening presents and trying to guess which colleague is responsible for whatever useless “under a fiver” object lies within. A cheap candle; some unappealingly scented bubble bath; novelty socks; a regifted box of old Matchmakers chocolates; a set of plastic wind-up teeth related to a niche inside joke that was never all that funny to begin with; a “comedy” sex toy that makes everyone uncomfortable and gets flagged to HR. Present after present that nobody really needs or wants, hastily bought on lunch hours and stress-wrapped in work toilets. It prompts the question: what on earth’s it all for?

I’ve never really liked buying presents – not because I don’t love the people in my life, but because that love doesn’t easily translate into the purchase of physical objects. I’ve still always gone along with it in the past though: played the game of trying to think up genuinely thoughtful, or at least useful, things. Tracking them down online or spending some of the bleakest hours of my life in Westfield shopping centre. Battling swelling anxiety that I’ve woefully missed the mark. Spending joyless afternoons wrestling with ribbons and tags while making a pig’s ear of wrapping them (an activity I find about as unbearably tedious as ironing).

I’m sorry to sound like the Grinch, really I am, but nothing about the process has ever felt remotely enjoyable. And I’m not the only one to think so. New research by Oxford academics revealed that Christmas shopping can be more stressful than watching a horror film or sitting an exam; shoppers’ heart rates spiked by 44 per cent to 115 BPM due to the stress of looking for a Christmas turkey, for example.