WELL, that’s that for another 12 months. All the planning, preparation and spending is over and we can forget about Christmas for another year.

I say another year but given that Christmas goods start appearing in shops in September, it’s probably closer to nine months before the festive season rears its ugly head again.

(To tell you the truth, I’ve actually witnessed my wife spotting a bargain and buying a Christmas present while we’ve been on holiday in June.) I know this is a familiar refrain but I really struggle to come to terms with the rampant commercialisation of Christmas.

Let’s face it, even the image of Santa Claus as a jolly fat man was to a great extent generated by Coca Cola.

Father Christmas had been depicted as many things, most notably as a tiny old elf dressed in furs in the poem A Visit from St Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore.

By its own admission, it was the commercial world of Coca Cola that helped to create the modern-day image of Santa and in fact the way most of us see Santa Claus – friendly and plump with a white beard – came from Coca Cola advertising in the early 1930s.

Given the excessive levels of spending we have come to expect over Christmas, I wonder if your festive season cost you more this year than last? The chances are it did.

The website housebeautiful.co.uk reckons the cost of feeding an average eight people around the Christmas table rose by 16 per cent since last year.

Baskets containing the top 11 items for Christmas dinner – from nine out of 10 supermarkets – were found to have gone up over the past 12 months.

This includes a rise in the average turkey from £8 to £8.99 and stuffing going from 30 to 34p. The cheapest supermarket basket for feeding eight people has risen from £19.82 in total to £23.53.

Why is this, I wonder.

Well, you can blame Brexit for a start. The effect of a weakening pound following the Brexit vote – making imports more expensive – made a major contribution alongside the natural effects of inflation.

And all those little treats cost more as well – or you just got less for your money.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) listed more than 2,500 products that have been reduced in size, with the prices staying the same – a phenomenon known as ‘shrinkflation’.

These include my own personal favourite Terry’s Chocolate Orange which shrank in size by 10 per cent in 2016, from 175g to 157g with the price remaining fixed.

And if all that isn’t enough to depress you, we still have Blue Monday to look forward to, claimed to be the most depressing day of the year.

This year, it is said to be Monday, January 15, the day when all that excessive Christmas spending hits our credit card bills.

The somewhat dubious science behind Blue Monday includes factors such as weather conditions, debt level (the difference between debt accumulated and our ability to pay), time since Christmas, time since failing our New Year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and feeling of a need to take action.

I think you can also add the length of time until your next holiday in the sun.

Makes you wonder if it was all worth it.

  •  I’m not really one for New Year’s resolutions but I do have some hopes for the coming 12 months.

I really hope David Keane, our Police and Crime Commissioner, can get through 2018 without any more controversy.

I also hope we see an end to the age of austerity with a loosening of the purse strings at the Town Hall.

Perhaps then, our libraries will have some sense of security and the council can also find the cash to finally paint some white lines on some of our more dangerous roundabouts.

And my most fervent wish is an end to the horrible traffic that plagues the town (and my journey to and from work). Well, we can all live in hope.