Fi Phillips

Do you make a Christmas gift list? I haven't written one since I was a child. It always seems a presumptuous thing to do as an adult but I suppose it is helpful, especially if your other half or family are a bit clueless when it comes to present buying. I have a bad habit of expecting my husband to know automatically what to get me for Christmas and my birthday. Surely he should know me well enough by now (we've been together for ten years). I have to admit though that I rarely know what to get him. Perhaps a Christmas list would be helpful. As a child I'm sure that my Christmas list each year made my parents despair. With the exception of toys that were new on the market, my list would usually look like this: pony (I started horse riding at a local stables when I was five years old), ticket to go see whatever pop band was my favourite at the time - Bay City Rollers, Sweet, Donny Osmond, a cart to go with the pony, a fairy (yes, really), acting lessons, a...

The first part of most people's Christmas day (not all, I admit) is the ritual of opening presents - checking the tags, handing them out to the right people, then ripping off the paper with cheerful abandon. Gift giving has become one of the main elements of the festive season - writing a list of what you'd like, planning what you'll get everyone and how much you can spend, looking out for bargains in the shops, buying the gifts themselves, wrapping them, arranging them around the tree (after first hiding them in a cupboard or wardrobe for a couple of weeks), handing them out and opening them. As parents, we can feel especially pressured into following this routine. We want our children to adore their presents so we spend more and more on them. My parents were just the same. I'd get the "We can't afford as much this year" speech at the beginning of every December and yet I'd still have a pile of presents on the day. Of course, we'd spend Januar...