THROUGHOUT last month we were bombarded with advice on how to organise Christmas shopping, while most of us were trying to keep our heads in the sand until at least December 1.

What to wear, what to buy, how to avoid panic, even how to finance the whole lot via your mortgage (ye gods!) - it was all there.

Now we're well into December, it's how to run "the day" itself without having hysterics - or a divorce in the new year. It's difficult to avoid it all, when tinsel and carols appear as soon as the "back to school" displays vanish from the shops with the start of the autumn term but, apart from ordering the cards, I can usually hold out.

Christmas, as we all know, comes but once a year, but it does come regularly and always on the same date. It also, in most families, follows a fairly predictable course.

Even down to the annual my-lot-or-your-lot/their-place-or-ours battle, it'll be much the same as last year. Women, because it's normally a woman running this show, are hardly going to change family tradition because some columnist thinks she has a better idea.

Relax. I haven't got a better idea and for one very good reason: I read these articles for their comedy value. You see, I know that I have never seen one which allows half an hour during the dishing up of that yearly miracle of co-ordination, Christmas dinner, for packing a full serving into an insulated bag so one of the party can do a family version of meals on wheels for nanna ten minutes' drive away. Been there, done that, for several years.

None has ever said "put vegetables on to cook, go to retrieve young chorister from service you didn't attend" (at least now she drives herself). In fact, few fit in church at all, in spite of it being a season when churches are crowded. Those which do mention it generally assume attendance at a midnight service so that "the Day" itself is clear.

No timetable plans for placating squabbling siblings, answering phone calls from far-flung friends who've miscalculated the gap between their time zone and yours and mundane things like making beds and dressing over-excited small children. In the perfect timetable world, of course, we all have dishwashers, too. Sir says I have got one, it's just that he's human. Bless him, he was a new man before they were invented.

Pinning up Mrs Paragon's guide to a relaxed Christmas Day on the kitchen bulletin board means that not only will you have to study, and almost memorise, the timetable beforehand but also have to keep stopping to waste time looking at what you should be up to. Hardly a recipe for relaxation. I get through on as much preparation as possible on Christmas Eve. The next day, lists everywhere - or I'll forget the sausages, or the bacon or one of somebody's presents - plus a fair bit of delegation, keep me on track.

But that's my answer. Yours is probably very different, twice as efficient and, like mine, has kept you sane through Christmas crises for years. We'll all just get on with it, in our own way, as usual.