In the worst possible taste

What are the rules of taste at Christmas? How might the fastidious chart a neat path through this garish and cluttered carnival of unreflective consumption? How might dignity be maintained in this tinselled and glitter-balled waste of space?

Actually, how might we design it better? Nicky Haslam once and quite correctly, without a flicker of irony, advised me that ‘coloured lights are common’. There is value in such advice and we will return to this refreshing idea a little further down the page.

Germans and Americans have a peculiar historic hold over our imaginations at this time of year. It was Victoria’s earnest German Prince, Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who first imported the hitherto pagan Christmas tree. And it was Albert’s over-busy man-of-business Henry Cole who introduced the mass-produced Christmas card, unwelcome prototype of junk mail.

In the wince-making doggerel of ‘’Twas the night before Christmas’, Clement Clarke Moore, a New York writer and translator (although some say it was Henry Livingston), established the idea that Santa Claus’s preferred transport option was a reindeer-powered sledge.