My daughter introduced us, as an alternative to the annual misery of shopping for awful garbage and receiving similarly ghastly stuff to add to the clutter in a home already overfilled with clutter, to the idea of "buying" from the various international charities things like the planting of some trees in a Third World country, or a stack of anti-typhus injections for kids, or work to protect an endangered species, or . . . Not only does this reduce the misery all round but it somehow seems a hell of a lot more Christmassy than the traditional mammonistic orgy.

Although some family members resist the notion, most are loving it.