SUDDENLY the hot breath of Christmas, like a charging rhino, is on the neck and the determination not to panic teeters. A minor mercy amid the telescoped tensions and frantic timetabling is that everyone else's survival plans are in disarray, too.

Joan, who buys all her Christmas presents in the January sales - yes, such people really do exist and nobody's shot them, yet - digs out the carrier bags that give her such smug satisfaction only to find they are filled with mouldering potato peelings and mildew. Oops, who threw out the wrong bin liners in the house move? It's hard to feel too sorry for someone so organised they positively thrive on being asked to make the costumes for the Nativity. No dishcloth graces her shepherd, nor frayed tinsel her angel. Embrace the Christmas spirit? When the eight-year-old gaily announces her friend's got a Furby and wonders if she can have one, too? At least the children have given up the pretence of believing in Santa Claus. They have been forced to take a firm line and tell us that it's time we knew the truth although we insist that we shall go on putting sooty bootprints and reindeer chewed carrots

by the fireplace, so there. So we have a conversation about the

mean-spirited toy-makers who manufacture shortages of coveted gifts and agree to write to Watchdog and the Prime Minister to complain. Bah, humbug, indeed, but maybe I am deluding myself.

Perhaps those who sleep all night outside a toyshop to bag a Furby or a Teletubby, or whatever is this year's rage, are better parents than I shall ever be. It's just that after we'd talked about the lack of Furbys on the international market and discussed the evils of rapacious capitalism, there was a pause before the small voice asked what, anyway, did a Furby look like?

Sometimes we take the determination not to fail our children too far. Perhaps it's we grown-ups who are fearful and rudderless and emotionally needy so that we panic at the prospect that any hope should ever be disappointed.

Before the age of commercial hype and emotionally-retarded adults, the Father Christmas story and its international variants could take their proper place as a piece of affectionate family fun. It is good when parents give without taking any credit for it, and share in that sense of wonder and universal benevolence and saturnalian mischief. He's brought you a shotgun after all, yuck. I said we'd never have one in the house but, oh well, since it's Santa . . .

And it's by no means entirely a matter of money. Archie Cameron, in his autobiography Bare Feet and Tacketty Boots, conveyed the magic of Christmas on the isle of Rhum before the First World War. It was a dirt-poor childhood but his parents put spirited imagination into giving their seven children a sense of wonder. On Christmas Eve the sound of a bugle would rise and fall, as if aboard a passing sleigh. Next morning, stockings would bulge with coloured paper and a few small toys. There would be a mutton bone behind the door where Santa had ''dropped'' it, an orange found rolling on the floor which had fallen from his sack, a few rare and precious sweeties strewn on the floor. Somebody's trouser legs would be tied so they knew ''he'' had a sense of humour.

Cameron does not romanticise poverty. Rather, he believed in ''a father and mother who, during those anxious and frustrating times, made every effort to ensure that their children had all the thrills and beauty of the Christmas season''. Magic was made, carefully, thoughtfully, with a deep understanding of children's needs and enjoyments. How many of us can claim as much now?

So we should think ourselves sane. It's the season of goodwill, not a competition. You haven't written individual gift tags? Wouldn't you rather have a life? 'Tis the season to say no. A good friend has given us a start. Rung in her faraway temporary homeland by a sister-in-law who informed her in peremptory tones that it was her turn to have elderly father for Christmas. But he's Jewish, she stammered. And when she arrived home in Scotland in late December she already had her own children and her mother and a thousand and one . . . in short, she swallowed her guilt and said no. So the old man goes to the sister-in-law who has no children and knows the rules of Kosher cooking by heart. Hurray. It's a start. And here's another rule for our new yuletide survival guide: cheat. Buy the sodding pudding. Bury the box at the bottom of the bin. That's what

24-hour Safeways are for.

And the angel of the Lord came upon Mary and said unto her - attempt nothing, nothing whatsoever, without a glass of fizzy in hand. (They missed this bit out of the King James Version.) Finally, just because that's the way the family's always done it doesn't mean you have to. The walls of the domestic temple will not tumble just because the bread sauce burns.

The ludicrously high expectations we have for Christmas mean that when it's not picture perfect the sense of disappointment is crushing. For the past few years I've increasingly come to the conclusion that I've no-one to blame but myself for heaping on the pressure to perform a perfect Christmas. Does anyone else really care? It's doubtful. So the only question that remains is whether the charging rhino can be held at bay for another week and the last-minute frenzy staved off forever.

There are no rules (apart from the one about fizzy) so make up your own magic as you go along. Hang the guilt on the Christmas tree and dispose of it with the festive rubbish. If you're another Joan, just make sure it doesn't include next year's presents.