Why are 300 cheap Christmas presents worse than one very expensive one?

When richer people take their kids on Christmas ski trips or buy them a new Christmas saddle for the new Christmas pony, there are murmurs only of quiet approval, But because 300 fivers mummy went for quantity over quality, she got an online pasting, writes Suzanne Harrington

TIS the season to be conflicted, fa la la la la, la la la LAH.

As the environmentalist George Monbiot writes of “hedonic stimulus that lasts no longer than a nicotine hit” and within weeks ends up in landfill — he’s talking about novelty Christmas presents like solar powered plastic dancing nuns — an Isle of Man woman is digitally tarred and feathered for the 300 presents under her tree.

Not gifts for the local orphanage, but for her three young kids. And not so much under the tree as rising towards its baubled neck, like gift wrapped floodwater.

Because she is an ordinary working woman, both her character and parenting skills have been dissected under a Daily Mail microscope; if she were a rich dad and had spent the same amount — a grand and a half, which averages out at 300 fivers, so nothing flash under there, just lots of landfill — would anyone have even noticed?

Apart from George Monbiot?

When richer people spend multiples of that sum taking their kids on Christmas ski trips or buying them a new Christmas saddle for the new Christmas’s pony, there are murmurs only of quiet approval, rather than shrieks of derision.

But because 300 fivers mummy went for quantity over quality, she got an online pasting.

Can’t see the Facebook post? Click here

Meanwhile, Harvey Nichols shows us how to avoid ‘GiftFace’.

This is the face you make by displaying your teeth, widening your eyes, and making insincere ‘ooooh’ noises; it happens when you are disappointed by the Christmas present you are opening, but for socio-cultural reasons, feel it necessary to feign delight.

Oooooh, an electric banana slicer, you really shouldn’t have.

What used to be called ‘good manners’ is now called GiftFace, thanks to the ramped up expectations around the primary gifting period — because, yes, that’s what shops call Christmas — and we have all been sucked in, like polystyrene balls up a hoover.

We are all Verucca Salt now, sitting amidst our piles of landfill, fake smiling through gritted teeth.

This month’s Vogue suggests a variety of stocking fillers to alleviate GiftFace, in a thoughtful gift guide covering all ages.

There is a silver bunny egg cup which retails at around €600 — there’s a matching duck egg cup too for the same price. You could perhaps buy the pair, for the discerning toddler in your life.

If you bought a set, you’d have spent more than the woman in the Isle of Man with her present-drowned Christmas tree, but because it is a handful of tiny expensive items you would be considered chic and elegant, rather than some screaming chav.

Yet George Monbiot’s suggestion of landfill-free gifting — to bake someone a cake, sing someone a song, give someone a hug — would be received, in my household at least, with all the enthusiasm reserved for tax bills and chicken pox.

Here’s a photo of a goat I bought in your name for a distant family in the developing world, instead of that games console you wanted.

Howl. Slam. Oh dear.

Because there’s only one thing worse than GiftFace, and that’s NoGiftFace. Verily, it is a minefield.