Dear Jasminda,

My husband has suggested we get a shared present this Christmas and he has decided that the shared present should be a barbecue.

I was hoping for something a bit more personal.

Do I just go along with it?

Mrs Tara F.

Dear Tara,

Normally I complain about any conversations to do with Christmas prior to December, but after what has felt like a year of apocalyptic proportions, I reckon we should just get it over and done with.

So, let’s have this conversation.

People celebrate Christmas in many different ways.

There are those who have been putting presents on Lay-by for months.

Their festive tree is already decorated.

The house is adorned with lights.

They have had their Christmas photo shoots and they are about to embark on a marathon of cooking, starting with the Christmas pudding and ending with rum balls with Oh Come All Ye Faithful blasting from their sound system.

Others are a little more subtle.

A week before Christmas, they wander aimlessly around the shops wondering exactly what a surly sixteen-year-old boy could possibly want or need.

They drag the Christmas tree from the garage and discover it’s infested with rat droppings.

They make plaintive suggestions to the more celebratory members of the family to forget the whole thing, and then they too make rum balls . . . well, they pour themselves a rum.

Close enough.

Now to the whole present thing.

We do a secret Santa that is never a secret because certain members of the family are impossible to buy for, so we demand a redraw — a bit like Donald Trump.

If your husband is keen for a shared present, then at the very least, you should both have input into what that present is.

Perhaps the barbecue would be more suited to a Father’s Day gift? Or a birthday present?

So no, I wouldn’t just go along with it, unless it means he is going to be doing more than his fair share of cooking, in which case it sounds like a great deal.

Carpe diem, Jasminda.