Dreaming of a stress-free Christmas

If you're reading this with a view to making the festive season as painless as possible, I've got news for you. You're too late. Well, not really, but let's put it this way: you're pushing it. According to those who write helpful little leaflets entitled Top Tips For A Happy Holiday, How To Keep Your Cool This Yule and suchlike, you should have started in October. Yup. October. Feel your blood pressure rising already?

Hang on a second. Do you really want to be the sort of person who at the first sign of trees slipping into something a bit more autumnal draws up their Christmas-card list and - get this - updates their address book? Thought not. So let's start again.

The bad news is that there's no escape. From this point on, you can't avoid the crowds, the shops, the sweat, the whole horrible helping. (On the other hand, avoiding it isn't all it's cracked up to be. John Grisham has just written a mildly amusing yarn, Skipping Christmas, about a guy who really, really tries - salutary reading if you're that way inclined, and no, I'm not going to give away the ending.)

But here's the good news. Nearly everybody in the Western world - apart from hermits, shopaholics and the very, very rich - dreads Christmas. A recent poll conducted by MORI for the BBC found that, given a choice, many people would opt to visit the dentist rather than go Christmas shopping, which only one in five adults said they enjoyed. Three in 10 found shopping in crowded streets more stressful than looking after a baby. God gave us Christmas supermarket queues, the consensus seems to be, so we would know what hell is like, and steer clear of it.

Does it help to know this? Apparently, it does. Stress-management experts call it being present to your stress. "Much of it's about physical awareness," says Brian McIvor, who runs courses in career and life planning, which incorporate time and stress management.

"If you're aware of an increase in the stress level as it's happening, it's easier to pull back from it. Be aware of the dimensions of the problem. Be aware, first of all, that the body is meant to take stress; it's strain that it's not meant to take.

"So get to know what your own triggers are, and set yourself ways of measuring your irritability levels. If you're driving, are you reacting badly to people cutting in front of you? If somebody screws up slightly at work, do you blow up at them? If you're not letting simple things go the way you should, then you're stressed. Time to slow down."

What? Slow down? With shopping to be done, menus to be planned, presents to be wrapped? Is he crazy? If that was how you reacted, you've blown your cover. Inability to prioritise, accompanied by the conviction that things are out of control, is one of the classic symptoms of stress.

So here it comes - the notebook. The minute you finish reading this article, start making lists. Not just of what to do and what to buy and all that stuff. (You should have done those in October - just kidding.) But you can make life a lot more pleasant if you decide - today - what it is you enjoy around Christmas, and what your family enjoys. Then dump the rest of it. Nobody eats sprouts? Don't cook them. Hate writing cards? Don't send them. Stress-management experts call this taking control of the holiday.

"Expectations go sky-high around Christmas," says McIvor. "People have high expectations from the meal, and high expectations of everybody else. I'm not a psychologist, but I suspect it brings out the child in us all. If it's not quite right, we throw a tantrum."

So scale down your expectations and save yourself a lot of grief. And lists do help you prioritise. Even the act of writing a list can be therapeutic. A finely tuned shopping list means you won't run out of tinfoil or find yourself without fresh parsley. But there should also be room for treats, and that means treats, not just loads of stuff nobody really wants.

Try making a list of things you hate in your house - tins of biscuits, sugared fruit jellies, Christmas cake . . . Or one of things that would be great for breakfast on Christmas Day - smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, champagne, freshly squeezed orange juice . . . Or a list of things to do with the kids over the holidays - go on a treasure hunt, make a Christmas 2001 time capsule and bury it, or hide it in the attic, to be opened in five years' time . . . Or one of things nobody ever buys you - posh pΓtΘ in a glass jar, a giant bunch of freesias, a book token . . . This last, naturally, should be bought in full.

It's also helpful to remember, as you agonise over what to buy for whom this year, that hardly anybody remembers what they get. Plus, in a consumer society gone crazy, chances are that most people you know have everything they need a hundred times over.

So why worry? Buy them something you'd like to get, wrap it nicely and relax. Or go for a theme and variations, and buy everybody in your family the same thing: socks, gloves, a plant, a book, what used to be known as smellies and are now filed under "herbal body science", whatever.

And while we're on the subject of wrapping, here's just about the only useful hint I came across in acres of po-faced seasonal stuff on the Internet. Set up a "wrapping station" somewhere in the house, comprising paper, sticky tape, scissors, ribbons, gift tags and so on, so you can wrap things as you buy them and don't have to search through obscure drawers, tearing your hair out as you go.

Finally, buy at least three things for absolutely nobody, wrap them and put them somewhere safe. If neighbours you've never spoken to arrive bearing gifts at eight-thirty on Christmas Eve, whip them out triumphantly. If not, wait until the whole thing is safely over, then open them yourself in the company of a bottle of wine.

Anything else we've forgotten? "Get out," says McIvor. "Fresh air and exercise really do work. It's no accident that all over Ireland there are people doing walks on Stephen's Day. Use the holidays to regain your own space.

"Say you've had 12- and 13-hour working days over the past year, run a few days without the clock. Wake up when you want to wake up. Linger over breakfast. And when you go for that walk, turn back when you feel like it, not when the clock says you should."

You don't need to go for a 10-mile hike; anything outdoors will do. If you want the science, exercise improves blood flow to the brain, bringing additional sugars and oxygen, which help you to think more clearly.

When, finally, you are thinking clearly, you might remember what Christmas is really about. "The Christian ethic would say that Christmas is a time for reaching out to other people. My version of that is, do it so that people don't know, so the gestures are private. Visiting somebody who's elderly or not well, or taking on some work that you know won't be done if you don't bother with it."

It's not new advice, but it puts sprouts in their place.