For all the economic, social and climatic storms surrounding our December adventures, there’s no reason why a cost of giving crisis should cast too large a dark shadow over this period of joy and goodwill.

Nothing wrong, of course, with a swig or two at The Bar Humbug on the draining march to what has long been our Great Season of Too Much. After all, a journey starting for some as soon as the corn harvest has been safely gathered in demands an occasional reality check.

As usual, I couldn’t believe my September eyes when festive fare craved attention in an assortment of local shops. Embarrassed assistants claimed they were merely carrying out orders from on high because others had already bent a knee or two inside the grotto of rampant commercialism.

Echoes of how the passionate debate over Sunday trading panned out a few money-grabbing years ago when it became clear strong principles built on declarations of loyalty to a day worth keeping special just crumbled when rivals voted for “economic progress and more choice for customers.”

That might well have marked the dawn of a brand new era of “we’re all in this together” aimed at silencing arrant nonsense like standing back from a crowd and suggesting there could be more important matters than spend-till-you- bend or shop till you drop - or even buy till you die.

Do we really need best part of four months to answer that old question about where to go to pay how much for how many of which kind of what to give to whom? Especially at a time when prices are rocketing but expectations surely a bit lower than usual.

No wonder weary multitudes use December 25 as a priceless opportunity to contest the Great British Sleep-Off before sizing up tantalising holiday adverts on the telly and then rushing out for just a few more much-needed bargains at the frantic sales.

Yes, it’s far too easy to dismiss so much of this celebratory season pulling cynical crackers and searching for a pertinent message to go with plastic and paper fripperies. Here’s a good one – why is it customary at Christmas to leave homeless people outside while we bring trees inside? And if supermarkets were less crowed at this time of year, wouldn’t more shoppers use them?

Just when you hope for solace on offer in the safety of your own indoor world, someone quotes the first rule of a family Christmas – nobody is allowed to be elsewhere having a good time when they could be in the living room getting on somebody’s nerves.

I’m reminded of a little lad saying his prayers and passing on all the usual thank-yous before exclaiming in a very loud voice: “and don’t forget, it is Christmas soon and I want that new bike. Amen!” His mother looked on in shock and then rebuked him sharply: “There’s no need to shout, dear. God is not deaf.”

“No” came the response: “But Gran downstairs is! ”

Even the birds in our back garden were at it when I peeked out the other morning. Starlings began squabbling over where to go for lunch and how many places in Norfolk turned on Christmas lights in December

Blue tits darted and swooped in a bid to grab every special offer in sight. I told them this was not Black Friday, just a good old-fashioned Moody Monday. A lone robin, bossy and territorial, hinted only those wearing Santa red had a right to indulge in festive tweets.

The good news, of course, is that all creatures great and small, including crusty old Norfolk cynics, find fresh rations of optimism and harmony in time to laud this most uplifting time of year. We hang up our stockings of hope no matter how many darns or holes have been added since the old boy last slid down the chimney.

An optimist pops out of the gloom to emphasise you can still make people forget the past with the right sort of present, even if it takes next year’s money to do if. A friendly joker drops by to say it is perfectly okay to call Santa’s little helpers Subordinate Clauses. Some of them wearing energy caps will put in extra shifts at foodbanks and community hubs as soon as regular grotto duties are done.

Perhaps we’re on the cusp of a truly careful Christmas – full of mutual care and gratitude, genuinely believing it is far better to like what we have than automatically have what we like.

Aunt Agatha put it most succinctly in one of her postscript gems to a letter written in broad Norfolk to the EDP by Sidney Grapes as The Boy John during years of post-war austerity:

“The cost of livin’ is allus abowt the same – all yew’ve got!.”

That meaningful motto ought to tumble out of every cracker this time round.