Gluttony is one thing but if we must be voracious consumers at Christmas time then there's a solid case to be made for the fiercely practical if somewhat boring gift.
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However, before embarking upon this worthwhile Christmas endeavour, there are some strict gender-specific caveats to be observed.
For men choosing gifts for a female partner or significant other, practicality is a giving option fraught with uncertainty.
From personal experience, the innocent proffering of sewing baskets and knitting needles may be hazardous to one's health. In fact, gifting anything sharp should be avoided. Soft furnishings make for a wonderfully dull, practical gift and hurt much less.
Conversely, practical gifts for blokes are an easy fallback position. After all, our DIY lives revolve around the use of tools and machinery which can potentially inflict pain and/or injury.
It's an offshoot business opportunity gone begging for Bunnings. ("Would you like our free finger damage coverage with that drop-saw, sir?")
In our household, the giveaway silhouette of a hammer-shaped item gift-wrapped under the tree would lead to some excited speculation as to whether it may be a sculpted Estwing claw, the US-forged king of framing hammers.
Equally, a small giftbox with rattly items inside may well contain Dremel attachments. Because as everyone knows, a person can never have enough Dremel attachments (unless you are unaware of what a Dremel is, in which case this would be incomprehensible).
All this, of course, is yawn-inducing for those who can't tell a Phillips head from a square drive.
A friend of mine whose stepfather, ironically, is an accomplished South Coast builder (so accomplished, in fact, that he built a house for a Red Hot Chilli Pepper at Congo), prides himself on having not even a modicum of DIY skills.
His attempt at assembling a flat-pack dining table famously resulted in him swallowing a large screw. The extraordinary explanation to the emergency department nurses was that he just happened to have his mouth open (perhaps in fierce concentration or personal wonderment that he was even attempting this activity) whilst screwing the table leg to the tabletop from underneath. Thankfully, post X-ray, the harm passed (in a manner of speaking).
But it has since reaffirmed his intent never to again repeat such form of physical activity.
It's completely unfair that those of us who hanker for practicality in the Yuletide season are scorned and derided in equal measure. Unfairly, we are unfairly labelled as boring and Grinch-like.
All I want for Christmas is a concrete mixer. Which, embarrassingly, makes me sound awfully like Eric Olthwaite.
Michael Palin (of Monty Python fame) cleverly encapsulated the nature of the truly boring person in his often-forgotten classic short comedy The Testing of Eric Olthwaite (wonderfully, you can now find it online here).
Eric lived in bleak, soggy, working-class Yorkshire (the short film begins with "it were always raining in Denley Moor, except on days it were fine") and he only had three topics of discussion: shovels, black pudding, and precipitation.
He was so unbelievably dreary that his father, when arriving home from work, would only speak in French to avoid having a conversation with his son.
Poor gormless, tiresome Eric then woke up one morning to find his parents couldn't stand him any longer and ran away from home.
While Eric's shovel knowledge was mind-numbingly obscure, anyone who has done hour upon hour of serious digging will well understand there's a world of difference between a square mouth, a trencher and a scoop.
So this Christmas, don't pity the Erics of this world. Just buy him a shovel. He'll be as happy as a dig in the mud.
