Ho Ho Ho and a cheapskate Christmas to you all!

Christmas
This will be a year of festive frugality Photo: GETTY

Ho Ho Ho and a cheapskate Christmas to you all! It’s official, greed is no longer good for, Lo I say unto Ye, the Misers shall Inherit the Earth.

Forget fancy pants from Myla and posh Jo Malone bath smellies. Get behind me Polaroid Instant Digital Camera, lest I sin. Wii Fitness? Thou art the work of the devil. Skinflints unite, for no lesser authority than the Church of England is urging us to reject the satanic temptations of credit cards this December and place our trust in cash, lest we fall into a “terrible new year” of debt.

If it can’t be bought for the small change covered in bits of fluff and Twix crumbs hiding in your handbag, then it shouldn’t be bought at all, says Dr John Preston, the Church’s national stewardship officer, who’s quite possibly harbouring some bitter hinterland of years of being given market-stall socks and cheap aftershave for Christmas.

In a three-part videocast – three minute broadcasts shown on the internet – entitled “Wishing You An Affordable Christmas”, born-again ascetic Dr Preston preaches a message of consumer continence.

The usual festive frenzy of expensive presents and frou-frou will, he predicts darkly, lead to Bad Debt. He fails to note, however, that the absence of said frou-frou will lead to even Badder Blood, when friends and family discover that their L’Occitane Provencal Verbena Gift Set (RRP £27) has been met with a Finger of Fudge and a lemon car freshener.

Personally, I’m delighted. I can’t be doing with friends anyway. Plus, according to Verdict, the retail think tank, we’re supposed to be on course for a “selfish” Yuletide, with more of us splashing out on booze and food for ourselves, rather than useless knick-knacks for those we love.

It seems we will all be ordering extra cases of cava, hampers from the Fine Cheese Company, and a hand-piped selection from Hotel de Chocolat.

At last we have the Lord’s blessing to lavish ourselves with self love (incontrovertibly The Greatest Love of All). Imagine, instead of grudgingly giving people gifts we wish we could keep – simply keeping them! How much more fun would Christmas be then?

Leafing through the John Lewis catalogue would take on a whole new dimension if we were salivating over a £999 DeLonghi coffee maker for ourselves, and I confidently predict that the national reserves of goodwill would positively rocket if all that cashmere were to bypass the in-laws and make its way into our own wardrobes.

Think about it. If everyone just bought loads of stuff for themselves, it would be much egalitarian, there’d be no duplication, no disappointment and no need to queue for three weeks at M&S Returns desk, come January.

Pennypinchers wouldn’t have to get palpitations every time they walked along the High Street, as they could justifiably leave their purses at home in perpetuity, and impoverished relatives wouldn’t bankrupt themselves keeping up with the Armstrong-Joneses.

Fussy traditionalists might argue it wouldn’t be Christian to avoid gift-giving altogether, and to be fair, those Three Kings didn’t traverse thousand of miles just to show off their new 5th generation iPod nanos. Perhaps, then, a compromise is called for, where we could simply recycyle suprplus Noel tat from previous years – hang on, a whole swathe of us do that already.

Here in our household, Father Christmas has a proven track record in decorating EBay toys with Barbie stickers to conceal wear-and-tear, and we never fail to be genuinely suffused with seasonal pleasure at the prospect of re-wrapping and re-homing criminally twee Windowsill Herb kits and rancid Scarf and Glove sets. At least until they inevitably return to us, like unwanted feral pigeons, the year after next.

We already know first-hand that a little less cash equals a lot more thought, and Dr Preston is right, it’s not about worshipping the False God of Visa – for everything else, there’s Mastercard.

In the meantime, what could be more deeply spiritual than communing with yourself in Harvey Nicks, in silent contemplation of those must-haves you must have? Isn’t there a proverb somewhere that Wisdom is Geater than Rubies but not quite as Great as a Phillippe Starck chair and a Freesat Digital TV Recorder? Yes, now I come to mention it, I think there is.

So relax come December 25, for I bring Thee News of Great Cheer. Eat, drink and be merry, forget the red-cheeked kiddies with their shining eyes, ditch grandma in her armchair (not the nannny though, you definitely need to keep her on side) and let all the other assorted hangers-on fall by the wayside. You don’t need family cluttering up your fireside and finishing up the last of the stuffing.

You don’t need anyone, because this is going to be the best Christmas ever. This Christmas it’s all about you.