I’VE tried to be organised this year. I really have. I started Christmas shopping in August; squirreling bits and pieces away to try and ease the strain - determined not to be faced yet again with an entire list of presents still to be ticked off, and only one pay packet left before December 25.

But all I really managed to hoard was a bit of this and that. I’m still wading through the quagmire of Christmas shopping, on that last pay packet. It isn’t just the presents; it’s the cards, the stamps, the wrapping paper, the ribbons and bows, and the endless festive get-togethers I keep saying yes to, while my disposable cash is being disposed of at an alarming rate.

There’s so much on at this time of year - winter wonderlands, festive markets, reindeer parades, lights switch-ons, pop-up ice rinks, wreath-making workshops, Christmas country houses, with gift shops and farm shops full of lovely posh stuff, mulled wine trampoline parties (there really are such things). You have to be out and about just to avoid festive FOMO.

It’s all too much, isn’t it? December is one long to-do list and we spend spend spend, then Christmas is gone in a flash. Those of who are back at work straight afterwards are left wondering what just happened.

“Don’t waste your money on me,” I told my teenage nephew the other day, when he asked what I wanted for Christmas. It was another of the Old Ladyisms that have crept into my vocabulary of late, along with “Alan Titchmarsh is ageing well” and “It’s not forecast rain, but it feels like it might.” But I really don’t want the youngsters in my family to buy me stuff for Christmas. We’re all feeling the pinch this winter and, frankly, I don’t need another scented candle.

I do love Christmas, but the financial headache outweighs the joy. When my sister and I do the Big Festive Shop, instead of sticking to the Christmas dinner staples, the booze, a couple of bags of nuts, nice cheese and crackers and a box of After Eights, we go way off piste and pile up the trolley with daft extras that nobody really wants. Nibbles, dips, tempura prawns, mini Yule logs, spinach and feta filo parcels, spring rolls, breadcrumb-coated cheesy bites, profiterole stacks - just in case anyone fancies a bit of a graze in between the full-on scoffing marathons. This superfluous party food ends up barely touched, languishing in the fridge until mid-January when it’s shamefully chucked out.

Didn’t it all used to be much simpler? When I was a kid Christmas dinner was pretty much a Sunday roast, with paper hats. The pudding had coins in it (which seems quite Victorian now) and a brief flame on top, courtesy of a splash of brandy and my mum’s cigarette lighter. Later on my parents, a bit grouchy from a hungover nap, would roll a tea trolley into the living-room, and we’d eat turkey sandwiches, pickled onions and mince pies watching the festive Two Ronnies. That was pretty much it, but it was of course the best time of the year, and that was largely down to the simple pleasures that I still cherish. My mum peeling the carrots on Christmas Eve, with Carols from King’s on the radio. Watching the Alastair Sim Scrooge film with my dad. Stirring the Christmas cake mixture while making a wish. Hanging tinsel over picture frames and a string of cards across the mantlepiece. Playing Trivial Pursuit among the flotsam and jetsam of the Christmas dinner table, still wearing paper hats, when you’d rather be watching the Top of the Pops special, but deep down something tells you that these times really matter and they will stay with you forever.

This is the stuff that lasts, while the over-priced feta parcels, sushi rice balls and salted caramel mini bites will simply rot to mush in the back of the fridge.