Don't get me wrong. I love Christmas. I love the parties, the opportunity to see people you don't see enough of during the rest of the year.

There's so much good TV, rich food and socially sanctioned boozing.
More recently, I like the opportunity to fill my daughter's head with a load of charming nonsense about Santa and reindeer.

While I'm not religious, I find nothing to object to in the celebration of the birth of Christ. I like carols, I like the lights and I like getting presents.

I just don't like buying them. And that's what I'm due to do this weekend. Hence my failure so far to embrace the festive spirit.
When I say I don't like buying presents, I don't mean I resent the financial outlay. I mean I find it a daunting task I am apt to botch.
Buying for men is easy. We can't have enough ties or socks, for instance.

But wives are difficult to buy for, aren't they?

Mine loves clothes, so should be easy to please, but buying a woman clothes can be fraught with potential pitfalls.
Women can, apparently, be different dress sizes at different points in their bodies and in different shops.

Some have a size 12 lower half and a size 14 upper half, for example, or are size 10 in Top Shop and size 12 in M&S - or is it the other way round? Don't ask me.

It's no good erring on the side of caution, because which side is that? You can cause just as much offence by underestimating a woman's size as by overestimating it.

You might think you're safer with perfume. But, according to my limited knowledge on the subject, you can't quite tell whether a certain perfume suits someone until they're wearing it.

CDs are no good in the era of the download. Books are losing their premium since the sad demise of Borders, where they're going cheap. And most of us have a backlog of reading material we're still waiting to get round to.

But leaving gifts to the last minute is a dicey business. Last year Superdrug sold more than 300,000 bottles of perfume on Christmas Eve, which suggests that a lot of men leave it late.

But what if you're detained until after even Superdrug is closed? You could wind up in an all-night garage, trying to chose between some L plates and a can of de-icer.

Better a bra, even an ill-fitting one, than a pack of dashboard wipes and a reduced-to-clear Ginsters pasty.
It's not yet happened to me.

But, reader, I have stooped pretty low.

How can I forget - especially when my wife keeps reminding me - that shameful moment some years ago when, skint and time-strapped on the eve of her birthday, I bagged a photo album which I saw on offer on the way home from work?
The tell-tale half-price sticker discovered under the bed days later was as incriminating as any lipstick-stained collar.
So not only do I have to impress this Christmas; I have to atone for past sins. But how?
Bah! Humbug!