Christmas is fast approaching with all its love and glory! Apart from peace, happiness and goodwill to all mankind, I want to wake up on Christmas morning like I did when I was a little boy... I want to smell the sweet pine needles of the Christmas tree... I want to jump out of bed, put on a blue flannel dressing gown and sit cosily on an armchair opening presents wrapped in paper of every colour.

Christmas is a time for presents and most of us don't just love receiving presents but also feel the need to give them. Cynics may say it's merely pushy manufacturers and shops desperate to cash in on what we blithely call the festive season that make us feel this sense of obligation. I think there's a deeper reason. French sociologist and anthropologist Marcel Mauss was clearly on to something when he showed in his seminal work "THE GIFT: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies" that the urge to exchange presents is deeply entrenched in all societies around the globe and has nearly always been invested with a great deal of meaning.

In our privileged world, we have a deep-seated urge to express our love and admiration by giving gifts. It also goes some way to making us all feel better about the matter. It isn't crass commercialism - it is a biological imperative. We must deal with it.

I may be 69, but I would be delighted to find that new book I had heard about but forgotten the title, or a travel gadget I will never understand how to work. I want an abundance of relevant and irrelevant things; but most of all I want a long luxurious holiday in the city of my dreams - Istanbul - a beautiful city on the Bosporus which is crackling with creative innovation, from new nightlife hotspots to ambitious contemporary art venues - all set against the perennially breathtaking backdrop of timeless Byzantine and Ottoman beauty.

 

Jos Edmond Zarb

Birkirkara