Well, the annual winter festival of "It's Just Another Day" is fast approaching. I am preparing in my usual way, by repeating to myself a merry little mantra, which goes like this: "It's just another day. It's JUST another day. It's just another DAY." Repeat, with yogic breathing, until relatively calm(er).
Meantime, I rush to school with a cheque in hand for 36 bright blue cards of smiling snowmen, drawn by none other than my own dear son William, eight. "I know I've missed the printing deadline. But please, please can we order three dozen, or William will never forgive me," I beg. ("It's just another day. Breathe, breathe.")
If I am in time to order the aforementioned cards, luckily I have a sheet of 60 or so Santa-themed second-class postage stamps already in my desk. They are left over from last year, when I did not get round to mailing out the four dozen green reindeer cards drawn by William when he was seven. But as I said, who cares? It's Just Another Day.
In the Marks & Spencer food hall, I find myself hopping from foot to foot as a woman dithers in front of the last three chocolate advent calendars in Exeter. Only just do I restrain myself from elbowing her out of the way. (One more time: "It's Just Another Day.")
Oh and guess what, last weekend was Stir up Sunday. Did you don a large snowy white apron and get your children to make wishes as they mixed up great bowlfuls of fragrant cake and pudding mix? No, me neither. So now our cakes will not have matured in time for the actual Just Another Day Day.
Alas, I spent Stir Up Sunday defrosting the freezer and doing seven loads of coloured washing. Never mind, I could just buy a cake at vast expense later on. All together now: It's Just Another…
Oh, and I had meant to make lots of sloe gin for everyone as a heartfelt, home-made gift that does not cost an arm and a leg. Strangely, however, the sloes are still in plastic carrier bags in the freezer and someone has been at the gin. I daresay I can get something for everyone online the week before. Just Another Day, after all.
Yes, these were my thoughts this week as the telly ads and the twinkly lights and Santa's Grotto at the garden centre all conspired to make me feel scarily pressurised and short of both money and time. Bah and Humbug just about summed it all up.
I mean, I would not mind so much if Christmas happened every, say, four years or so. But do we have to make such a fuss every single year? It comes round again faster and faster and I spend a good month a year – that's a twelfth of my LIFE – fussing over presents and puddings and last posting dates.
I am not even starting on the whole religious aspect – which, yes, is important. But then, so is Easter, when I can get away with a few chocolate eggs, a visit to church and a Sunday roast. The work of a moment, compared to the fuss that goes on every December.
Then, when I was parked outside the church in our local little market town yesterday, I spotted a couple I know well. They are both in their late eighties. In fact one of them is turning 90 next year.
They were making their way carefully across the road, bearing trayfuls of something which, on closer inspection, turned out to be beautiful hand-made Christmas decorations. Not bought online but created with real pine cones, old-fashioned red ribbons and a lot of painstaking effort. "We're just going in to decorate the pews," they explained. "How lovely to bump into you."
They usually come to us at Christmas, so I grabbed the chance to invite them for this year. Their faces lit up and they accepted delightedly. "We so enjoy it," they said.
I got into the car feeling somewhat, well, chastened. If it was not for Christmas, we would not get round to having old friends over. Or even if we did, all the children and extended family would not be there. This really special occasion just wouldn't be happening at all.
I just need to get things into perspective. Christmas is much, much more than just another day. But it should not be a reason to go completely Yule-zilla bonkers in a tinsel-wrapped frenzy of unnecessary gifts and faff. You have to tread a fine line. I'll let you know how I get on.