Christmas crafts

CHRISTMAS — a warm, intimate winter break steeped in much-loved tradition, or a stressful, meaningless, overpriced, overexposed load of tinsel-covered nonsense that has nothing to do with anything except buying more stuff?

We have veered towards the latter — the more affluent we became, the more Christmas lost its way, until all it meant was spend, spend, spend.

Enter the recession. Now we can no longer all spend, spend, spend. Does this mean we are faced with the 21st equivalent of Dickensian tragedy, involving weeping 10-year-olds being given satsumas instead of PlayStations?