This is bound to be a source of both regret and of pride to them. At the same time, they may be left wondering how they managed to miss so many obvious clues for so long. It is amazing what a concerted advertising campaign can do to human credulity. But then, Christmas throws everything into sharp relief, and the truth of it is that reality is a dreadful business.

However, for the rest of us, the challenge seems to be in trying to remember that Christmas lasts just one day. Running round the house, looking for a biro so that you can write down "tin foil, brown sugar, apples" in a military column, it is rather difficult to recall that the shops will be open again on Wednesday. Christmas always feels like such an emergency. You are shopping for Ireland. It is the deadline of deadlines. There are many people who prepare for Christmas as if it was a nuclear war. Planning, buying and hoarding for months beforehand.

I wish I was one of them. Whilst I remain subconsciously convinced that Christmas will shut down normal life for the subsequent six months - and quite possibly for a year - I don't seem to have done very much to guard against this catastrophe.

All that stands between me and starvation in the third month is 26 cans of tomatoes.

And there's Nigella making an entire television series about mulled wine. I have so gone off Nigella. Not her first book, which is a classic. But the sight of Nigella sensuously crumbling cinnamon bark into a bubbling saucepan whilst fixing the camera with a sexy stare is kind of hard to take when you're wrapped in your worst cardigan, trying to forget the fact that you haven't done the washing up. Whatever about Charlie Haughey, it's hard to believe in anybody who makes their own mince pies.

Had a couple of hasty slugs of Lidl's mulled wine which tasted hot and a bit peculiar - in other words exactly like the real thing. The German writing is rather hard to read but it looks like it's called Christkindl Gluhwein, with those two small dots on the u.

Surely someone should tell Nigella about this, and about ready-made mince pies as well. Our mince pies are sitting on the top shelf of the fridge in their nice red box, waiting for the day when someone is hungry enough - or jarred enough - to try them.

And then there are the Christmas decorations. The advertisements always show happy couples smiling at each other as one of them is up a ladder, pinning something tasteful to the tree. There has never been any public acknowledgement of the fact that most couples start the Christmas festivities by shouting at each other about fairy lights.

Personally, I blame the children; a gullible electorate who force everyone else to act as if they are convinced as well. Children don't really do minimalism, or anti-materialism. They like normal life. You may think that a single fairy light on the ironing board is a postmodern response to the excesses of the festive season, but children just think that you are a sad bastard. The only people who can get away with the single fairy light on the ironing board - as a friend of mine who once tried this decorating scheme discovered - are students whose visitors are taking a lot of drugs. But if your guests are fuelled by Coke rather than coke, then they want the Full Monty on a proper Christmas tree.

And more Coke.

What the hell, we're in the middle of it now and there's nothing we can do about it. I would like to wish imperfect householders everywhere a happy Christmas. The type of householder who has thrown the mess of their lives into cupboards for the Christmas period, and offered up a special Christmas prayer that the doors of the cupboard will hold. You know, we're never going to find any of that stuff again. But I believe in you.