I am a Christmas stocking heel

Christmas may be a magical dream, but it can also prove to be a logistical nightmare. Putting aside the broad questions about how to accommodate the competing demands of the extended family, the planning of the most granular aspects of the festive season would test even Santa’s renowned organisational skills.

There’s the tree, for example, which must be selected off site to fit a space that you’ve inevitably failed to measure – again. The erection of the thing at the right angle and in the perfect spot is enough to bring the calmest of couples to the brink of separation, and that’s even before you reach the point of decorating it in a way that involves the children while ensuring that they don’t make it look like someone’s vomited tinsel all over it.

Then there’s the Christmas food, probably to be bought or ordered well in advance, stored in a fridge or freezer that doesn’t have any space, prepped on Christmas Eve, and finally cooked in a military-style operation on the big day, to be served on the dot at 1400 hours – just as the cooks are on the verge of a nervous breakdown after being shouted at for the last two hours to come and open some presents.

And of course, there’s the bicycle your child has been yearning for all year, which was out of stock except for during a short window in October, purchased and kept hidden in the shed, then awkwardly wrapped, mostly in sticky tape, before you realise it won’t fit through the living room door unless you bend the handlebars, which you can’t unless you want to rewrap the blasted thing.

But at least there is a payoff with each of these elements. The tree, once up, lights lit, will bring a twinkly joy that makes you feel the world is all right and unchanging. The Christmas lunch – unless the cousins are late and ruin it – will be the highlight of the season for gluttons across the land. All that slaving over a pudding in September, the rolling of pigs in blankets on Christmas Eve, and the basting of the goose every 20 minutes since 10.30am, are worth it and then some. Plus, you’ve got leftovers to look forward to. As for the bike, the delight on your usually angry child’s face when they rip off the paper is just what you’d hoped for.

There is, however, one aspect of the whole fandango that can never justify the hassle it creates: the Christmas stocking.

It is, in principle, a cute tradition, born from a legend about St Nicholas secreting bags of gold in some socks that were drying in front of a fire. But the modern-day reality is more like Ronald McDonald chucking in an unwanted toy with a “happy” meal.

As a child, I loved the anticipation of waking on Christmas morning to find a bulging stocking at the end of my bed. But I would usually discover that it contained more or less the same bits of tat that I hadn’t wanted last year, either – a new pencil; a plastic party game; a “make your own” foam aeroplane; some chocolate coins (OK, I liked those); a satsuma, and so on.

By 3.30am, the stocking gifts had been unwrapped and mostly put to one side; the chocolate had been started, then also set aside when I realised it wasn’t that delicious so early in the morning; and the long hours till I could reasonably wake my parents had begun slowly to stretch out before me.

As a parent, I spend weeks before Christmas, in alliance with my wife, buying things that we hope the kids might like, or at the very least find useful, or perhaps consume – while knowing that they will probably feel much as I used to. They must have an equal number, to save an early morning row, and there are one or two things they seem to expect (notably a chocolate orange, which for some reason they appear to regard as a stocking essential), but which are inexplicably unavailable throughout the town.

On Christmas Eve, all these items must then be wrapped, but not in the same paper we’ve used for presents under the tree, lest it be thought that the stockings haven’t actually been filled by Santa Claus himself – notwithstanding the fact that neither of my children any longer believes him to be real.

Finally, there is the battle to try and sneak the stockings into the kids’ rooms when both are far too excited to sleep but wouldn’t hear of them being left “by Father Christmas” anywhere else in the house.

All this for a 15-minute frenzy of gift opening first thing the following morning, little gratitude, and probably a general sense of disappointment.

Am I a Christmas stocking heel? Yes, I am. But do I still love Christmas? Absolutely! So, forgive my rant, and here’s to a socking good one all round.