How's this for a Christmas giving idea?

When will Australia stop pretending it's a fogbound island off the French coast? Here we are with the sun beating down and the prawns going off, still waiting for a visit from an old codger in fur-lined robes and funny hat to dispense good cheer to every household. Dammit, this is a whole other hemisphere! Let's do things our way!

Still, enough about the Queen's Christmas message. Whatever traditional or constitutional baubles we hang on it, Christmas is about consumption, and specifically about overconsumption - the day for too much of everything, pushing through the pain barrier at the table and burying the Christmas tree under gift-wrapped parcels.

It doesn't make much sense, of course - it's rather like giving your mum a dozen bottles of Penfold's Grange but insisting that she drinks them all in one day - but how many of Australia's economic (or constitutional) traditions do make sense? Every inefficiency, every bit of planned obsolescence, every piece of public waste, every unnecessary detour seems to have been built into the ugly ramshackle fabric of our society and signposted 'Do not touch', for fear of the loss of all-important jobs. This year, too, every purchase from an actual shop is a prince's kiss on the lips of a retail sector that's been comatose since April.

We shouldn't accept that false choice. You can have a slap-up Christmas with all the trimmings without buying into the myth of more, more, more. You can fill the hole inside not with fruit mince tarts exclusively but also with a little of that warm inner glow. Give something to somebody you know needs it, will like it, and won't break it in five minutes and cry. You don't have to spend ages agonising about whether they've got it already; money comes in all colours and suits every ensemble. Donate something to one of the causes you support (or one of the causes that oppose the things you're against) and oil the cogwheels of the community sector.

Our Community's Denis Moriarty