Stuck in the Xmas party from hell? Hog the canapes and dream about sexy Sherlock! SARAH VINE'S guide to surviving Christmas By Sarah Vine Try to out-bore the bores There is something about walking into a hot, crowded room full of people pretending to enjoy themselves that can freeze even the most socially self-assured in their tracks. Alcohol, nerves, other peopleâ€™s halitosis and uncomfortable footwear are serious impairments to brain function. Iâ€™ve been known to forget names, confuse faces and introduce warring exes to each other. I once spent a good half-hour chatting to Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie only to discover later that he had been, in fact, BBC supremo Alan Yentob. Luckily, he was very nice about it. Over the years, I have learned to my cost that the best thing to do for the first 15 minutes of any social gathering is as little as possible. If you get stuck with the party bore, try not to zone out, otherwise you will find yourself ripped from that daydream involving Benedict Cumberbatch into the ultimate social horror: the unheard question Evoke the Green Cross Code: stop, look and listen. If possible, do this in close proximity to the food source (I find that if you stand still long enough, the waiters will eventually take pity on you and leave you your own platter). If you spot someone you know, wander over; if not, just stay put until the food runs out. Never try to circulate. Circulating is much harder than it looks, unless you actively enjoy risking social death by interrupting other peopleâ€™s conversations. Iâ€™ve only ever known one person with sufficient chutzpah to do it well and that is a spectacularly charming TV historian, whoâ€™d think nothing of insinuating himself into a chinwag between Henry Kissinger and Hillary Clinton. Unless you're the Queen, who uses handbag semaphore to great effect to summon her ladies-in-waiting, you will probably have to extricate yourself unaided For the rest of us, itâ€™s a painful and not always entirely successful process â€" not dissimilar to childbirth. If you get stuck with the party bore (and there is always one), try not to zone out completely, otherwise you will find yourself cruelly ripped from that nice little daydream involving a brooding Benedict Cumberbatch in a deerstalker into the ultimate social horror: the unheard question. A simple â€˜Iâ€™m so sorry, I missed thatâ€™ is the best approach. Donâ€™t ever be tempted to reply blind: you risk agreeing to something unwise (giving them a lift home, bringing back hanging, having an affair) or offending mortally (â€˜What do you mean, no, you donâ€™t like my new hairdo?â€™). Almost worse than the party bore is the face-eater. This is the person who stands much too close, splutters canape crumbs in your face and bangs on relentlessly about some incredibly contentious or dreary subject (immigration, mansion tax, their childâ€™s A-level results) without allowing you a word in edgeways or, indeed, an opinion of your own. Often but not exclusively male, and usually drunk, the face-eater will say the same thing over and over again until you agree or pass out, so itâ€™s best just to acquiesce early on and save yourself the agony. At some point, you will want to escape. Unless youâ€™re the Queen â€" who uses handbag semaphore to great effect to summon the cavalry in the form of her ladies-in-waiting â€" you will probably have to extricate yourself unaided. Be careful about doing the â€˜Iâ€™m just popping to the looâ€™ thing: if the bore in question is a borette, this can result in her simply accompanying you to the ladies. My preferred option is to fight fire with fire: politics, the weather, home improvements, dental issues â€" all are shatteringly dull topics that lend themselves well to this strategy. As soon as their eyes start to glaze over, make a run for it. PS: The best parties I have been to are always the ones where Iâ€™ve arrived late and left slightly early. Neither too keen nor too desperate, thatâ€™s my motto. Some families are best avoided I love a family Christmas. Just as long as the family concerned is not my own. There was the time, in a fit of first-world guilt, that my mother donated all our presents to charity; the time my father trod dog poo all over the house and then blamed everyone else for it â€" the row became so incandescent, one of us â€" I forget which one â€" spent most of Christmas Day afternoon on the phone trying to get a flight out of the country. But the straw that broke the camelâ€™s back was one especially toxic gathering, a few years ago, that was caught on video: I have a broken arm, my children are silently chewing their turkey in terror, my husband and father are not speaking and the only sound is the grating of knives and forks on china. Every few minutes, the dog jumps into view, like a demented jack-in-the-box. Not even Mike Leigh could have imagined such a tragi-comic scene. So, after many years of trying to make it work, I have decided there is no shame in admitting defeat. Itâ€™s not that I donâ€™t see my family over Christmas; we simply avoid the day itself, which seems to carry with it such a weight of expectation itâ€™s destined to be a failure. Don't be afraid to fake it Wicker Rudolphs, shabby-chic angels, inflatable Santas, embroidered baubles and enough lights to illuminate the dark side of the moon: the humble Christmas decoration has, in the past few years, gone supersize. It wasnâ€™t that long ago that the Christmas lights would be carefully put away on January 6, along with the moth-eaten tree fairy and a few glass baubles wrapped in cotton wool; nowadays people have different themes each year, thanks to the sheer volume of options available. In the market the other day, I saw a woman handing over Â£300 for an almost life-size fibreglass reindeer. Aside from the cost, what on earth are you supposed to do with it the rest of the year? In London, there is a company that will deliver your Christmas tree fully decorated and lit (complete with faux presents, if you so desire), then take it away again in January. Wicker Rudolphs, shabby-chic angels, inflatable Santas, embroidered baubles and enough lights to illuminate the dark side of the moon: the humble Christmas decoration has, in the past few years, gone supersize As for trees, it feels like half of Norway has been felled to fuel our passion for real fir. All so we can pretend to be spending Christmas in some Alpine schloss. If you happen to have a large fir tree in your garden, then great: decorate it. Otherwise, I donâ€™t see whatâ€™s wrong with the plastic foldaway variety â€" especially since these days they are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. Card's aren't a competition I had a drink with a senior Cabinet member the other day who was frantically signing a stack of Christmas cards. Why is it, I wondered, that politicians like to put themselves and their families on the front of cards, instead of more traditional festive scenes? Simple, he explained. If people get a card from someone important, they want everyone to know. Whatâ€™s the point in having a card from the Prime Minister if it looks the same as the one from your auntie? Quite when Christmas card-giving became a competitive sport I donâ€™t know, but thereâ€™s no doubting it is. Children in rival public school uniforms, double-sided A4 missives describing in dreary detail the yearâ€™s events and evidence of luxury foreign holidays visible in the suntanned faces smiling out at you. Christmas cards arenâ€™t about Christmas any more, theyâ€™re about .â€‰.â€‰. well, practically anything but. I put most of mine in the recycling. Give in and give the kids the presents they really want The main difficulty with presents is disparity of expectation. If my son, for example, wants a PlayStation 4 for Christmas and instead gets what I would like him to have â€" a set of edifying books and a Scrabble set to help with his spelling â€" there are going to be tears. So the key to a successful present is to buy what they want, not what you want them to want. If my son, for example, wants a PlayStation 4 for Christmas and instead gets what I would like him to have, a set of edifying books and a Scrabble set to help with his spelling, there are going to be tears This principle is never more evident in the traditional male tendency to purchase ladiesâ€™ lingerie at Christmas. Men, you may wish to see your wife in an Agent Provocateur basque and suspender set; she would almost certainly prefer a new handbag. And ladies, perhaps it would be nice if your beloved took more care of his complexion, but I donâ€™t know very many men who would genuinely appreciate skincare as a gift. Itâ€™s also important not to be too judgmental. You may think it absurd to want a pair of Nike trainers when Adidas are half the price, but if itâ€™s Nike they really want, then anything else is a waste of money. For years, IÂ¿ve been asking Father Christmas for a KitchenAid food mixer (in red, ideally), to no avail I can remember as a teenager desperately wanting something â€" anything â€" from Benetton. My mother, quite reasonably, told me that she refused to pay through the nose for something she could get for much less in the market â€" but that was not the point. Wearing Benetton (I guess it was the equivalent of Jack Wills today) marked you out as being cool, which was actually what I really wanted for Christmas. PS: For years, Iâ€™ve been asking Father Christmas for a KitchenAid food mixer (in red, ideally), to no avail. Perhaps he thinks that giving me an item of domestic kitchenware could be misconstrued as sexist. If that is the case, I can assure him it wonâ€™t. Don't over shop They say that, in London, you are never more than a few centimetres away from a rat. Likewise, in the rest of the country you are never more than a short car drive away from a Tesco Extra. So quite why I need to stock up on â€˜Christmas essentialsâ€™ in October or book my â€˜seasonal delivery slotsâ€™ early is a mystery: the chances of running out of food over Christmas are extremely unlikely. And even if I do, thereâ€™s always the corner shop, which opens every day of the year except New Yearâ€™s Day. Besides, by the time Christmas Day arrives, Iâ€™m like a stuffed turkey from all the festive treats and am longing for a simple broth or maybe just a slice of toast and Marmite. How can any of us appreciate a bird with all the trimmings if weÂ¿ve been eating Marks & Spencer three-bird-roast sandwiches for lunch every day since mid-November? The problem with stuffing our collective faces in the run-up to the day itself is that it renders the whole concept of a family feast day meaningless. How can any of us appreciate a big, fat, juicy bird with all the trimmings if weâ€™ve been eating Marks & Spencer three-bird-roast sandwiches for lunch every day since mid-November? Bin the bird This year, Iâ€™m doing away with Christmas lunch. In a break with tradition that may or may not go down well with my husband and children, weâ€™re going to have a lavish brunch at around 11am (contraband Cheerios for the children and a full English for the adults) and then a telly supper to coincide with Dr Who. Menu to be confirmed, but itâ€™s a toss-up between the childrenâ€™s choice (fish fingers, chips and peas) and the adultsâ€™ choice â€" roast pork, crackling and too much apple sauce. It seems ridiculous to cook a bird the size of my dog for three â€" the childrenâ€™s portions count as half. Sales are a con If the gridlock around my local shopping centre on Boxing Day is anything to go by, shopping is the nationâ€™s oxygen â€" after one whole day without it, weâ€™re gasping for it. Youâ€™d think the shops had been closed for months, not a single day, with carloads of shopping addicts, flushed by the thought of a bargain, desperate to get their hands on more stuff to add to all the other stuff theyâ€™ve just acquired. It would be more understandable if the concept of the Boxing Day bargain wasnâ€™t so bankrupt. Are there any real bargains to be had in the Boxing Day sales? Will it just be the same old stuff, only with an extra 25 per cent off? Christmas is still a week away and already the shops are discounting heavily. Gap has had a half-price sale for days; TK Maxx is practically giving stuff away. In the battle of ever- decreasing profit margins, itâ€™s hard to see how any of these shops will survive. And is it worth risking life and limb to find out? Almost certainly not. Relax. It will all still be there in a weekâ€™s time. Don't go out! In most city centres, New Yearâ€™s Eve resembles a war-zone. Inanimate bodies lying in the street, people crying, piles of vomit, fireworks going off, ambulances everywhere. Thereâ€™s only one sane thing to do: stay indoors and get quietly sozzled in the privacy of your own living room, perhaps in the company of a few friends. In truth, most people have no choice. If youâ€™ve got children, finding a babysitter is impossible â€" unless youâ€™re prepared to pay Â£100 an hour. Restaurants and bars ramp up their prices beyond all reason â€" and youâ€™ve more chance of winning the Lottery than finding a cab after midnight. Add up the cost of your average New Year's Eve out on the tiles and you could probably afford to dine on caviar and champagne Add up the cost of your average New Yearâ€™s Eve out on the tiles and you could probably afford to dine on caviar and champagne. Or you could save your money for something useful â€" such as paying off all those nasty Christmas credit card bills heading your wayâ€‰.â€‰.â€‰.