You start by pretending it doesn’t exist at all. Act like Christmas will wait for you and have a laissez-faire attitude until you other half starts setting up reminders on your phone and gives you a rocket up the arse that Christmas is three weeks away.!
Then let him order lots of things online in
the first instance. Throw helpful ideas his way. When these items arrive realise he has ordered hardly anything and race to the nearest shopping mall to physically buy stuff. When there you realise these kids aren’t toddlers anymore and they want specific bloody things that need ordering online.
Back home the ordering presents online comes in waves. First you start trying to order well priced, suitable items that have longevity and environment in
mind. The second wave involves downloading Temu and ending up ordering twice from Amazon throwing any fucking thing in the basket.
The last wave is just pure panic. Money no longer matters, the credit card is out and the Santa list have finally been completed and not one present on the list has already been brought (what the fuck is Splatoon?). It’s just a feeding frenzy at this point. You could offer to sell me a genuine Arsenal kit in the car park of Lidl and I’m probably going to say yes.
We are now in the final phase of waiting to see if the final (ridiculously expensive) items arrive by Christmas Day. I seem to have hit some sealing point where I won’t pay for Express Delivery, but I will pay a tenner for a small catnip banana for the cat. So we wait and see what might arrive this week. Anything might be left in a box behind the bin. I daren’t check my order notifications as small quafters of Baileys aided this madness.