Eco-worrier, die-hard traditionalist… whatever your feelings about Christmas, there’s a stereotype for all of us.

Christmas is here, in case you haven’t noticed. Oh, who are we kidding? Of course you’ve noticed. Much like the release of a new Star Wars movie, Christmas is completely and utterly impossible to avoid. One way that Christmas is not like Star Wars, though, is that it’s very much a self-directed affair. We all go about things in our own little way, peppering the schedule with personal quirks and family traditions. Which of the following six festive clans sound familiar to you?

The most wonderful time of the year doesn’t have to be the most wasteful. And it won’t be, not in your house. The tree? Locally grown and selectively harvested. The decorations? Foraged and upcycled. The lights? Solar-powered. As for the turkey, what could be more organic than rearing it yourself in the back garden? Ah, but it’ll be sad to see old Drumstick go under the axe. The kids – Artemis, Gaia and Moon – have grown awfully attached. Still, they’re never too young to learn about these things. And they’ll soon forget about it once they see their gifts. You can’t wait for their eyes to light up when you tell them that you’ve sponsored three toilets in Burundi on their behalf. Even if they did ask for a Nintendo Switch.

Christmas doesn’t begin – not officially, anyway – until the Coca-Cola advert airs on TV. Never mind that Coke is just about the least festive drink imaginable. (“Something to wash down your mince pie, vicar? A little mulled wine? No? You’d rather have Coca-Cola? Right. No, that’s absolutely fine. I’ll just pop out to the shops.”) It’s not just Coca-Cola, either. You struggle to imagine the festive season without the warm, reassuring presence of your favourite brands. Would it even be Christmas at all without a family-sized Quality Street box on the coffee table? Or without a mountain of Lurpak in the fridge? Because nothing says “bring on the festivities” like individually wrapped chocolates and slabs of Danish butter. Your friends mock you for it, of course. Tell you that you’re missing the true spirit of Christmas. Accuse you of allowing cynical corporate interests to exploit our collective sense of nostalgia. What they fail to mention is that they secretly get just as excited at the sight of those red trucks lit up in convoy as you do. All together now… Holidays are coming! Holidays are coming! Holidays are coming! Holidays are coming!

It’s a time for giving and for receiving. A time for love, laughter and logs on the fire. Most of all, though, it’s a time for getting one over on the neighbours. That’s why, every December, your front garden plays host to a display of illuminations so excessive and power-hungry that it practically requires its own electrical substation. Not to be outdone by the likes of Ms Melania Trump, whose holiday decorations for the White House include 18,000ft of strung lights and 53 trees, you’ve endeavoured to give the inside of your house a similar treatment this year, too. After buying your local garden centre out of Christmas trees, you’ve spent the past three days transforming your living room into a living pine forest, at the centre of which stands your pièce de résistance: a 12ft spruce hung upside down, its roots exposed and painted silver à la Mr Karl Lagerfeld for the Claridge’s lobby. Now, if only you could get your guests to refer to it as an “installation” rather than a tree, as per your polite request.

The mere detail that Christmas becomes harder and harder to avoid with every passing year is no reason for you to stop trying. In fact, the inescapable nature of the festive season is the very thing about it that bothers you the most. As the late columnist Mr Christopher Hitchens was fond of pointing out, Christmas provides the citizens of Western democracies with an annual, month-long taster of what it must feel like to live in North Korea. Everywhere you go, you’re exposed to the official propaganda of the Dear Leader, whose cheery, bearded face gazes out at you from advertising hoardings, shop windows and soda delivery trucks, and on every radio station and in every public space in the land, the same, state-approved set of songs can be heard playing on eternal loop. And the blindly obedient masses have the cheek to call you a Scrooge for not displaying sufficient levels of festive cheer. You’re not a Scrooge! You’re a dissident railing against the sinister forces of a totalitarian regime! When will these sheeple wake up?

We all have our traditions. Those little things that Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without. Only, you’ve got so many that it’s a military operation to fit them all in. The family game of Scrabble on Christmas Eve. The mince pie and glass of brandy by the fire. The stocking fillers. The presents. The first glass of champagne in the kitchen. The whole family getting involved with veg prep. Carols from King’s followed by Abba’s Greatest Hits. It’s A Wonderful Life at 11.00am, Shrek at 1.00pm and the Queen’s Christmas Message at 3.00pm. The cracker jokes. The charades. The unscheduled visit from mad Aunt Joan that throws off your perfectly planned schedule. The dry turkey. The burnt roast potatoes. The blistering family row. The frosty silence as you sit in front of the TV for the rest of the day, steadily working your way through a litre bottle of Baileys Irish Cream liqueur. And, finally, the blissful release of sleep. You look forward to Christmas all year. It’s supposed to be a rare moment of stillness, when the world breathes a great, collective sigh. In your case, though, it’s one long sigh of exasperation.

For a certain subsection of the population, the onset of the festive season coincides with a complete abandonment of all taste. They embrace the questionable virtues of the Christmas sweater. They decorate their homes to look like the stage of a working men’s club. They send awkwardly posed family greeting cards. There’s nothing wrong with this kind of behaviour, at least not in principle. Christmas is a great many things, but tasteful is not one of them. Still, it helps to keep in mind that even tastelessness exists on a spectrum. At one end, there’s the ironic state of self-aware tastelessness known as kitsch; at the other, there’s just plain trashy. There’s always a risk when acting in an ironic manner that people will take your actions at face value. In other words, the difference between kitsch and trashy exists solely in the eye of the beholder. So, which one do you suppose best describes how you look in that bright green “Happy Birthday Jesus” sweater? Kitsch? Or trashy?

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