How to keep your Christmas spirit when all about you are losing theirs – it’s an annual conundrum, particularly as you get older and less inclined to make any effort whatsoever. The War on Christmas, as anyone not watching “The Nativity: Facts, Fictions and Faith” on Fox News at this very moment is well aware, isn’t prosecuted by a lose collective of socialists, atheists and “alternative” religions. No, the real war is being fought by the forces of Christmas capitalism, those which burn joy out of the season with the intensity of a Star Wars lightsaber (25% off until New Year’s Day – just enter code YOURKIDHASTOOMANYTOYSALREADY).

It is pointless, in these circumstances, to look back fondly on the days when the only shops open on Christmas Day were the emergency pharmacy and a single paper shop two towns over, inspiring the kind of bulk-buying the week before that gave Christmas the quality of a well-stocked but still quite panicky siege.

Neither is it prudent to misremember the presents we used to get. For no reason I can fathom, I have a clear memory of playing one year with a toy car made out of a cork adorned with pins and old buttons, an image I have a horrible feeling I’ve stolen from Twopence to Cross the Mersey, Helen Forrester’s account of growing up in the slums of Liverpool in the 1930s and about as far from my days in 1980s Buckinghamshire as you can get.

It’s true: the most exciting element of Christmas used to be the “snow” beneath the tree, made of polystyrene packing material, which, I remember, thrillingly retained one’s teeth marks when you bit in. But if there hadn’t been presents stacked on top of said snow, meltdowns would have certainly ensued.

Anyway, I’m not just talking about presents. We are gathered here today to discuss the texture of this holiday as a whole. The entire point of Christmas is that it’s supposed to be boring; you get an hour of excitement first thing and then the day devolves into an endless cycle of cooking, small talk, snoring relatives, over-heated rooms with no escape and – in England, at least – the Queen’s Speech, an annual lowlight that reminds you of the virtue of every other day of the calendar year when you are not made privy to Her Majesty’s thoughts.

Then comes the slow, dull glide into evening, with its massive sense of anticlimax – like the worst Sunday-night-before-school feeling, tinged with senses of loss, aging and the terrible, terrible transience of it all.

How to preserve it, this magical experience, which we may call the integrity of the occasion? Much as the annual Ugly Sweater party annoys, it is at least a gesture towards some earlier aspect of Christmas, when fun wasn’t fun so much as a bracing thing to test your endurance.

I have a few suggestions. Streaming The Interview or the yule log: no. But downloading choirboys singing Christmas carols definitely helps – their shrill, piping voices disturb the dust in the basement of your soul and excite vague feelings of sadness and regret, which might generously be called religious in tone.

A dose of actual religion really helps on Christmas Day, and you need to get at least one radio sermon in under you belt – I would recommend the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Christmas address, even if you’re in the US – to experience the horror-novelty of time slowing to a crawl, letting the words wash over you and luxuriating in the fact that they are not designed to titillate, interest, excite or keep you tuned in for 11 more episodes, while Sarah Koenig ponders whether or not to take up the facts of the case.

The best tactic for preserving the spirit of Christmas, then, is to think of something you would rather be doing – and revel in the masochism of not doing it. The season of over-indulgence should ultimately be characterized by self-denial. Do not pop out for milk; do not watch Netflix, catch up on Serial, read a book or play Candy Crush all day. Instead, do as God intended and play charades until your eyes bleed and you beg for mercy. Along with members of your extended family, watch a two-hour documentary about the Second World War, making bland, irrelevant comments about what a terrible waste it all was and how you didn’t know that about de Gaulle.

Nap until you just can’t stand it any more. Then hit the New Year running, enlivened by the unbelievable range of possibilities at your disposal.