Rebecca Barry: 'Tis the season to be jolly confused

Queen St's winking Santa (pictured in 1961) has been given a makeover.

This year you can buy your children a FurReal Lulu toy that "licks her paw to clean her face", a cat-in-a-bag featuring a realistic looking cat in a paper bag that might encourage your wee one to suffocate the family moggie, or a fun "Breathing White Cat" that lies sleeping when you switch the "on" button, yours for $29.95.

Or you could just get a cat.

As gift ideas become increasingly redundant, so do other traditions, such as Christmas cracker jokes. "What does a transvestite do for Christmas? Eat, drink and be Mary."

Hilarities of this ilk are set to be replaced by such lines as, "What do angry mice send each other at Christmas? Cross-mouse cards."

Swantex, Britain's biggest manufacturer of crackers, said the overhaul was needed to make sure its humour was in keeping with "changing attitudes". A bit degrading to mice, don't you think?

In Auckland, even Santa has had a makeover. Gone is the boozy, winking eye and come-hither finger that once enticed us down Queen St. Now he's suffering from rigor mortis, plastered to the side of the Whitcoulls building after his post-operative humiliation by face bandage.

Deck the halls with boughs of organic holly. 'Tis the season to be jolly without disrupting your body mass index. Don we now our gay apparel? Fa la la, la la la, la la la.

I used to live on a farm with cows that contributed to the world's carbon emission problems. Like most of their bovine cousins, Darlene, Charlene, Karlene and Marlene were extremely flatulent. Although the majority of their emissions didn't appear to impact the environment other than leaving trails of steaming Ferrero Rochers across the landscape, we offset their damaging effects by planting hundreds of pine trees.

Throughout the Christmases of the 1980s we had perfectly symmetrical, authentically pino-fresh, arachnid-festering Christmas trees in our living room. As the trees outgrew our yuletide purposes we were forced to clip off individual branches, resulting in hunch-back Christmas trees that required the most delicate hand when decorating. Release the angel at the wrong moment and she would tumble from the top of the tree and roll under the couch to the depths of hell.

Despite the trees becoming too unwieldy to haul inside as single units, one year a neighbour climbed the electric fence with an axe and nicked off with one of our pine trees. I can only imagine he was trying to offset his own methane problems as I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have got the tree past the front door. And with all that electricity pumped through it, it was probably dead and brown by the time he got it home anyway.

In memory of that fallen tree, my tasty four-legged friends, and in the spirit of the climate change conference in Copenhagen this month, it makes sense to celebrate this year with a carbon-neutral Christmas. This year the fairy lights should be powered by job-hungry graduates generating the minimum wage via small bicycles under the house (it's too hot on the solar panels). Dinner will be a fat-free, gluten-free, MSG-free vegan feast with pesticide-free vegetables flown in from the US. The turkey-shaped piece de resistance will be carved from marinated tofu and recycled dog scrounged from last Christmas' unwanted pets. For dessert, free-trade chocolates made with palm oil.

It's important to infuse a little tradition into proceedings. As well as the usual round of backyard cricket, why not burn off Christmas lunch with the old New Zealand classic, Light the Cigarette Race, a party game from the early 20th century. Rival teams competed to see who could get to the end of the line the quickest with all their durries alight. It was said to be a way for people to get fit.

Not that we need to exercise during this time of relaxation. Only 25 more days to buy presents for your 376 cousins, attend the office Christmas party, your partner's office Christmas party, take 18 clients out for lunch, finish 900 reports, send 12,000 Christmas cards, get the house looking decent, say a little prayer and become Nigella Lawson.

By the same token, we're not supposed to be getting buxom what with bikinis and Speedos calling. The recession is over so it's okay to spend. We're only just out of recession so it's irresponsible to spend. Reduce your carbon footprint. Reduce your carb intake. Have a Christmas mince pie and a crate of beer. Give to charity. Become a charity case. A pinch and a punch. Welcome to the silly season.