Planning for best ever Crimbo is a plan to fail

Invoke the merest thought that we're about to have the merriest of merry yuletides and it'll all come crashing down around you.

I've seen far too many episodes of EastEnders and Corrie to know how it all ends.

I only watch them once a year, when the relatives have dominion over the remote control, or have accidentally sat on it, but the theme is always the same.

It starts with someone who has had a rough old time of it of late (adultery, bereavement, drug abuse, take your pick) using Christmas as a time of new beginnings.

They deck their halls with props of holly and invite over all the various on-screen family members, complete with their various baggages of problems, and someone murders the landlord of the Queen Vic. Or gets run over.

Or crashes a tram into The Kabin.

Oh. Apparently, that didn't happen at Christmas.

But maybe there'll be a baby born in the back of a Weatherfield taxi who then grows up to be replaced by a completely different actress who eventually becomes famous only for wearing bikinis and being an idiot on I'm A Celeb.

The career of Helen Flanagan wasn't exactly a Christmas disaster, but it was a Christmas storyline that started it all off. I blame Christmas for Helen Flanagan.

Now I know there's a distinct difference between soaps and reality (they're all actors, apparently, who knew?) but I do think there's a few cautionary tales we can learn.

Everyone spends so long looking forward to one day, wishing away weeks or even months worth of decent days in the process that they go a little bit mad.

The only other occasion where we'd spend so much on food, drink, gifts and clothes would be our weddings.

But at least they only happen once (in theory) and they're always about just two people.

The problem with Christmas is that everyone's absolutely determined to show goodwill to all that they forget about the important things.

And I don't mean the after dinner mints.

I mean the basics, the things that really matter – being nice, manners, simple human decency.

Try to get a pint of milk at Asda from today until New Year's Day and you'll get a good idea about how mankind would behave in the event of an impending apocalypse, clearing the shelves of anything edible.

We're so desperate for it to be fun, so determined to have a good time that we wind ourselves up into a frenzy and start shouting at the turkey for being too cold.

So I'm not bothered if this is or isn't the best Christmas ever. It'll have its moments – my little girl squealing with delight at the sight of a bauble or being as enchanted by the flex of a computer as she is by various In The Night Garden merchandise – and that's enough.

Maybe you like all the shopping, the wrapping, the crackers and the paper hats. And I'd never ever begrudge you any of it. I hope this is the happiest Christmas you've ever had. And at the same time I hope it's not as good as next year or the year after and you just keep reaching previously unfathomable levels of joy.

I'm just not going to build up something that is meant to be a bit of fun, to give us all a break, to the point that it becomes a struggle and a chore.

Christmas will be back again next year, with the same songs and the same repeats to brighten up an otherwise fairly grim few weeks weatherwise.

Once it's all over, the decorations will just go back in the loft, we'll all go back to work and it'll still be cold.

And Helen Flanagan will still be everywhere.