Picture the scene. It’s the workplace “Secret Santa”, an annual custom beloved by exactly nobody, however one which staff nonetheless really feel compelled to take part in every December as if it have been a contractual obligation. Employees sit round awkwardly opening presents and attempting to guess which colleague is answerable for no matter ineffective “below a fiver” object lies inside. An inexpensive candle; some unappealingly scented bubble bathtub; novelty socks; a regifted field of previous Matchmakers goodies; a set of plastic wind-up enamel associated to a distinct segment inside joke that was by no means all that humorous to start with; a “comedy” intercourse toy that makes everybody uncomfortable and will get flagged to HR. Current after current that no one actually wants or desires, swiftly purchased on lunch hours and stress-wrapped in work bathrooms. It prompts the query: what on earth’s all of it for?

I’ve by no means actually favored shopping for presents – not as a result of I don’t love the folks in my life, however as a result of that love doesn’t simply translate into the acquisition of bodily objects. I’ve nonetheless all the time gone together with it prior to now although: performed the sport of attempting to assume up genuinely considerate, or no less than helpful, issues. Monitoring them down on-line or spending a number of the bleakest hours of my life in Westfield procuring centre. Battling swelling anxiousness that I’ve woefully missed the mark. Spending joyless afternoons wrestling with ribbons and tags whereas making a pig’s ear of wrapping them (an exercise I discover about as unbearably tedious as ironing).

I’m sorry to sound just like the Grinch, actually I’m, however nothing concerning the course of has ever felt remotely satisfying. And I’m not the one one to assume so. New analysis by Oxford lecturers revealed that Christmas procuring could be extra annoying than watching a horror movie or sitting an examination; buyers’ coronary heart charges spiked by 44 per cent to 115 BPM as a consequence of the stress of on the lookout for a Christmas turkey, for instance.

However this 12 months goes to be totally different. As a result of this 12 months, I lastly had an epiphany.

On a good friend’s suggestion, I sat down to look at Purchase Now! The Purchasing Conspiracy, a Netflix documentary about overconsumption within the trendy period. Ninety minutes later, I used to be just about radicalised into by no means wanting to purchase something once more for the remainder of my life.

The doc explores the chilling psychological tips utilized by corporations from Amazon to Apple to Adidas to induce us to purchase extra: fixed “drops” of latest designs, a tactic launched by fast-fashion manufacturers however now the norm throughout the trade; deliberate obsolescence constructed into each gadget and tech product, which means customers don’t have any alternative however to improve telephones, laptops and headphones each few years.

AI visualisations, displaying the grossly absurd quantity of stuff continuously being produced, are stunning to see: 68,733 telephones every hour; 2.5 million footwear every hour; 190,000 clothes every minute. This stuff pour out of buildings and down steps, creating tsunamis that fill streets and accumulate into towering mountains of junk. The sequences present the bodily actuality of the state of affairs we’re now in; the already big variety of objects being churned out is rising exponentially 12 months on 12 months. However the place do all this stuff go?

We’re caught on a planet with a finite quantity of area, but we hold filling each nook of it. Given that almost all of what’s produced, together with our garments, is made out of some type of plastic, it’s going to hold round for hundreds of years to come back. Even when it does break down, it releases microplastics, which wind up in the environment: our meals, our consuming water, even our brains. Microplastics which might be provably horrible for human well being, and are even related to the worldwide birthrate decline (linked as they’re to decrease sperm counts).

There’s already TOO MUCH STUFF, for goodness’ sake! And Christmas merely ramps all of it as much as much more sickeningly dizzy heights, constructing right into a crescendo of consumption that sees us spend huge quantities of cash to show we care about one another by swapping objects we’ve no want for! Do I sound hysterical? That’s as a result of I’m!

The concept that Christmas has been co-opted by corporations and reworked right into a rampant industrial enterprise is hardly new, after all. I’ll prevent the “actual which means of Christmas” spiel, which is best suited to being trotted out by a winsome, lisping American child in a Christmas film. However we’ve reached the purpose the place it’s now not merely trigger for a cynical eye-roll. That’s why I’m opting out this 12 months: I merely refuse to purchase a single bodily current.

Earlier than anybody accuses me of Scrooge-like tendencies, I will nonetheless be giving my family members presents – however they would be the present of time spent collectively. Going for a glass of champagne or reserving a Sunday roast; taking my household out to a present or my nieces for excursions (thereby additionally giving my sister and brother-in-law the priceless present of a day off parenting). It’s going to be 100 per cent expertise, with no wrapping paper to be ripped and discarded, no undesirable tat to be binned or stored and resented.

One other good friend is planning to make or bake all of her presents this 12 months, partly to save cash, principally as a result of she feels it is going to be extra significant. Another person I do know is doing a second-hand Christmas, shopping for all the pieces from charity outlets (and 1 / 4 of British adults have stated they plan to choose up pre-loved presents for his or her youngsters). For a few years, my mum has donated to charities on behalf of our kinfolk as an alternative of shopping for them presents. There are other ways we could be beneficiant with our cash and/or time – ways in which don’t proceed to place a pressure on our overburdened Earth.

I do know I in all probability sound at this stage like I’m carrying an all-hemp outfit and may by rights be dwelling off-grid and rising my very own courgettes. I’m most positively not, and I’m most positively not right here to evaluate anybody else’s selections. However the final time I walked via the aforementioned dreaded Westfield, wading via crowds, overstimulated by the intense lights and fixed clashing music and “beep” of card machines and panicked urgency of hundreds of individuals feverishly spending increasingly more earlier than it’s too late!, I realised one thing. We don’t truly want to do that. Not if we don’t wish to. It’s as much as us.

So, within the not-quite phrases of Mariah Carey, all I would like for Christmas, is to by no means have to purchase a single Christmas current – ever, ever once more.