Looking forward to Black Friday? Since your family now expects over £600 in Christmas presents, you better be

Black Friday is almost upon us, which sounds like a byword for the apocalypse but is actually – no, forget it, it’s a byword for the apocalypse. And this week, the apocalypse comes kitted out with surround-sound speakers on a TV so smart you’ll wonder why you ever bothered with that student loan when you could have just deferred all your intellectual decisions to its reassuringly smooth frame.

I plan to begin my Christmas shopping this Friday, even though I have stubbornly resisted festive cheer, eschewed mince pies and turned my nose up at mulled wine until the beginning of December until this year (and yes, I am available for motivational speeches). Something feels wrong about muddying the November waters with talk of reindeer and rampant consumerism. For me, this month is really about one thing: commemorating the death of an anti-government protester by burning effigies on him on a pile of fire. Isn’t that enough?

Apparently not – in fact, according to the latest numbers, hardly anything is enough for the Christmas-mad any more. The average person now expects a haul of £631 worth of presents, and their most desired yuletide gift is money. Santa Claus must be turning in his grave.

Coming from a rather large family myself – three siblings, a number of parental figures from various divorces and dalliances, and a handful of miscellaneous hangers-on – I shudder to think of the proportion of my salary it would take to bump them all up to the expectations of the national average. I suppose it would save me on wrapping paper just to turn up at the Christmas dinner table, dump a couple of £50 notes on each napkin and be done with it, but I just don’t feel like it would set the right tone.

With my atheism and my habit of passing over the bird for a microwaved Tofurkey, I already have a reputation for straying from tradition in unwelcome ways. A stony-faced handing out of cash before the cheeseboard course could hardly help matters.

To be perfectly honest, I’m mystified by the fact that Britain’s everyday man or woman even wants to receive £631 of awkward gifts around a rapidly shedding Christmas tree their dad nicked from Asda’s Most Neglected section when the security guard wasn’t looking. Once you’re past the age where it stops being cute and starts becoming sexually inappropriate to sit on Santa’s knee, present-giving begins to take on the air of reviewing a mangled rodent your favourite cat just presented you from the garden: “Oh my goodness – wow. I mean, I know you’re just expressing your love for me in the only way you know how, and I’ll be careful to hide it from you when I throw it away.”

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful to the family member who once wrapped up a ‘How To Tell The Time’ cardboard clock for me with the Poundland sticker still on it when I was fifteen, but all of our families have their foibles. That’s why the January sales exist: to assuage your disappointment on Christmas Day with the sweet, sweet balm of half-price winter coats.

So to everyone who answered the survey claiming we all desire £600+ in gifts this year, I implore you to lose the rosy-coloured glasses and take a good, hard look at your family and friends. Then ask yourself: would it actually make my life better if these people – who, now I see clearly, aren’t actually replicas of Prince and Vivienne Westwood - spent that kind of money on me?