Christmas can be an expensive time, especially if you have kids. However I think I’ve worked out a way to save you money in the future and it’s easy. Announce to your family that you’ve planned a magical trip to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. Your kids will go totally batshit at this news just like those kids in the Disneyland Paris adverts. Take them into Hyde Park and through the main entrance to the wünderland, buy them hot chocolate, candy canes, whatever…at this point the most important thing is to gain their trust.

Pretty soon you will hear a distant whooping laugh. You are drawing near. Ahead and to your left will appear a large hall of mirrors, outside it strapped into a chair you will see the above terrifying, barrel chested, freaky eyed, animatronic Santa lurching about as a looped tape of uproarious laughter plays on an eternal loop. This is where the magic happens. Tell your kids to wait in front of the Santa as you’re going to get them a special present and then retreat to safe distance where you can keep an eye on them but they can’t see you. Faced with the horrific image of Santa before them their natural instinct will be to flee but childish greed and the promise of presents will keep them rooted to the spot. There might be tears but leave them their for at least 15 minutes, this may be hard but ultimately it’s for their own good. Return bearing some rudimentary gift (a Tic-Tac , a Lockett, tissue fluff or whatever you have floating around your coat pocket) they will be so pleased to see you that at this point they will accept almost any old crap.

Santa has now been ruined for them and a lot of the sheen taken off Christmas as a concept. To reinforce your work try and play them the audio from this clip in their sleep. After a while their interest in Christmas and presents should wane but in some instances you might find that incidents of bed wetting increase.