Quite early on (i.e. in my twenties) I realised that the way to get through Christmas was to give myself a present. Thus I'd buy the lp - later CD - that special someone with similarly exquisite taste would have known I lacked but had to hear. No matter what else might end up beneath the tree, there was always the consolation in knowing something good awaited my ears.

Another tactic was to ask for a large omnibus edition. This kind of volume lends itself to intermittent reading - the kinds of sporadic acts of consciousness permitted by days of over- indulgence and fugged brain. The Complete Sherlock Holmes one year, The Complete Father Brown another. Then the Penguin Jazz Guides and The Oxford Encyclopedia of Wine. More recently it's been cookbooks - Nigel Slater's various Diaries were ideal ways of dreaming of meals for the coming year.

So this year? It looks as though I'll have plenty to keep me amused: Geoff Dyer's Working the Room and Christopher Hitchens' Arguably.

I've already started dipping into the latter and hit upon this in the introduction:

"The people who must never have power are the humourless".

Let's drink to that over the turkey and stuffing.