As each Christmas goes by I find the whole gift giving ritual more and more bewildering. OK, I'm an old misery, but it just feels so unnecessary. We don't really need any of this stuff: these books, DVDs, prints, badly fitting clothes, grooming lotions, and socks…actually, no, socks are good.

Christmas always gets me thinking about my old village pub. In my short lifetime, the pub has been through many ups and downs (and who knows what stories the walls could tell about its previous 300 years of its history), and it's Christmas Eve that seems to best measure the pub's varying fortunes.

Yesterday I heard an instructive tale from my aunt about her old friend Mary. Mary's second husband (doctor number two) happened to mention to her one day that his French father was happy to give him his large collection of Ming porcelain. Mary, not one to hesitate when it comes to artefacts that enhance status and/or wealth, immediately set out on the road to the South of France, with caravan and husband in tow to collect this birthright.

My nephew is now six months old, and I'm finding it impossible to be objective about him. Of course, I planned not to project characteristics onto him, not to extrapolate from imperfect people new and perfected traits. I found this infuriating when I was growing up: my brother was labelled the scientific one while I was the creative one. I felt outraged that we would be reduced in this way, especially as it was because – of course – each us was following in an Uncle So and So's footsteps. Still, my nephew does have a cheeky smile, which obviously bodes cheekiness (just like his dad) in later life.

A Dutch academic has just announced that, in fact, God was not the creator – or, at least, he was not mentioned as such in the Bible. Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar, believes that the sentence, "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth" is an incorrect translation of the original Hebrew, says Atticus.

I have just returned from Spain, says Atticus, where I had the pleasure of taking the night train, or "trenhotel" from Barcelona to Granada. It was the first time I had ever taken a night train and was looking forward to something approximating the glamour of the Orient Express. As I boarded I was horrified to discover that this wasn't to be the case – or rather it might be more like Murder on the Orient Express.

Friends are worse than paparazzis, says Atticus. With access to our intimate personal lives and never without a digital camera to hand, they snap us at all the worst moments – generally when we're looking awful – and gleefully post all these images up online for all to see. Just because they don't get paid for it doesn't make it right. I'm seriously considering demanding a media blackout.

Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are! Chants Mrs. M. Funny!  Have you noticed that the showy-off-y stars of the super-rich have gone into hiding?  They are nowhere to be seen.  Even their 150m yachts seem to have disappeared.  Where are the helicopters, the nights on the tiles in Mayfair consuming £40,000 a night in Cristal champagne, the lavish charity events with hedgies out bidding each other?  Even Yummy Mummies are thin on the ground.  What a relief!