’Tis the season to be stressy, so take my advice!

At this time of year, the stress industry comes into its own, busily promoting panic while trying to give the impression of dampening it down.

Professional counsellors — child counsellors, marriage counsellors, family counsellors — appear on breakfast television wearing specially concerned expressions on their faces in order to tell you how to ‘get through’ the Christmas period.

Meanwhile, tV chefs beseech us to prepare Christmas lunch way in advance. if you haven’t made your Christmas pudding at least a month before Christmas Day and sent your turkey to a good school and spoken softly to your Brussels sprouts and apologised to your chipolatas and shared all your worries with your roast potatoes then, when the big day comes, everything will be totally ruined.

And then there are those dreaded magazine ‘countdowns to Christmas’, with cards to be posted by late september, presents to be wrapped by midOctober and all your food to be in the fridge by early December.

these experts are primed to employ the word ‘coping’ at least once every 30 seconds, so as to give the impression that Christmas is simply a prolonged sAs-style exercise in coping.

the key message is that the only way to avoid last-minute stress is to begin stressing at least three months in advance. ‘Don’t panic! Don’t panic!’ is the shrill order of the day.

today, i was thinking of writing a parody of this seasonal stress-athon, but then i typed ‘stress-free Christmas’ into Google and i realised that there was no need.

Up popped an Nhs stress-site titled ‘Keep calm at Christmas’, with underneath, in bold type: ‘how to have a stress-free Christmas, including avoiding family arguments and sharing the workload.’

‘Christmas is a time for merrymaking and family get-togethers, but it can have its pressures, too’, it continues. ‘the family is stuck in the house, the kids are overexcited, there’s the tree to decorate, presents to buy and wrap and food to cook. it’s no wonder the festive feeling can fizzle out.’

’tis the season to be stressy. if santa Claus is coming to town, he’ll be wearing a long face and complaining of backache.

Next to its grim seasonal prognosis the Nhs offers two links, one to stress management and the other to anger management. Below them are two further links, the first to Relate: relationship advice and the second to samaritans.

the remaining Nhs advice for keeping calm at Christmas is eerily reminiscent of those old Fifties Ministry of Defence leaflets about how to behave in the event of a nuclear holocaust.

‘Make sure this Christmas doesn’t become a day to remember for all the wrong reasons’ it says. ‘Follow these tips from Relate counsellor Christine Northam.’

Relate counsellor Christine Northam is clearly a bundle of fun, mustard-keen to celebrate the big day by sprinkling a generous handful of misery-dust over the festivities.

‘if there have been any family rows during the year, resolve them,’ is her top tip. ‘tell the people you argued with that you’re looking forward to seeing them. Ask if you can get together before Christmas to talk about whatever problem you had.’

this must surely be one of the worst pieces of advice ever offered. Almost a year after you’ve had a set-to with your great aunt, should you really demand a special meeting to jog her memory as to who said what? i’m surprised the Nhs doesn’t provide a link for further counselling on resolving the row that will surely break out at the meeting to resolve last year’s row.

Christine’s next top tip is a clarion call to self-pity. ‘Plan the day and share out the jobs that need to be done. Don’t slave away for hours on your own and feel like people have taken advantage of you.’

By redefining cooking as ‘slaving away’ and other people enjoying themselves as ‘taking advantage’, she seems intent on making the Christmas chef feel hard done by.

Next tip: ‘have a timetable for Christmas Day so that you don’t all sit around for hours doing nothing. try to make sure you won’t be spending a lot of time with a difficult person or someone you don’t get along with.’

so there we have it: ‘15.30 hrs: Great Aunt Mildred to go upstairs to bed. 15.35 hrs: rest of the family to have fun. 17.00 hrs: Great Aunt Mildred to come downstairs. 17.02 hrs: rest of family to stop talking about her.’

the final Nhs top tip for a ‘stressfree Christmas’ is about how to keep children occupied: ‘Plan a lovely long walk . . . everybody will feel better.’

this can only be a joke. in my experience, the best way to turn happy children into shrieking monsters is to mention the phrase ‘lovely long walk’.

My own advice for a stress-free Christmas? ignore all the advice.