Reading a newspaper is a complex process and involves more than heading to your local newsagent, saying good morning, paying, thanking and rolling the printed news in your hand as you stride briskly back home, eager to spread it on the table next to your bowl of cereal.

While a newspaper is hardly a literary work, and whereas it is usually written relatively quickly and is meant to be read even quicker, its digestion still requires that most odious of tasks: thinking.

Reading the newspaper for mere enjoyment is the basest of activities. People of this sort would do well to find a hobby. There are many, many other things more enjoyable than a newspaper. Even in the realm of reading, newspapers, no matter how well written, are at the very bottom, just above the bestsellers. If you're into reading for the sake of reading, then grab a copy of Dickens or Calvino, Proust or Stendhal, and enjoy a true master at work. Reading is one of the few forms of art where witnessing the work of a master, even owning it, in a sense at least, is cheap and affordable to almost everybody. Films are already slightly more expensive, but try to do that with photography or theatre: to see the work of the masters is almost always an expensive enterprise.

No, one should not read a newspaper for mere enjoyment. A person who reads the newspapers is not a person who reads. At best, he is as much of a reader as a person who plays football with his mates on Saturday is a footballer: the kind of footballers whose matches end when they get tired, and is followed by a couple of pints in the local.

A newspaper should be read to update oneself with the daily goings on and on-goings of the world. That is not enough either: the act of reading newspapers goes beyond the acquirement of information.

You are all familiar with the manual mechanics of the procedure: getting the newspaper, holding it firmly in hand, preferably while folded it in the middle, and, if endowed with a greying moustache and are in the habit of wearing glasses on the tip of the nose, opening it with regular and swift jerks of the hand, the paper swishing the air and producing a sound loud enough to alert the whole neighbourhood of your reading endeavours. With the free hand, you may proceed to dunk a biscuit into a cup of tea, or fondly caress your intellectual facial hair.

If, at the end of this age-old ritual, you simply fold the paper and relegate its contents to oblivion with an indifferent sighing sound of "ah, that's that", then you are most definitely not reading the newspaper properly. This is because a proper read of the newspaper begins after the actual reading process, which is but the warm-up. If you read about an injustice which affects you, then proper readership ritual dictates that you follow it up.

A newspaper is like a menu of injustices: you don't simply choose an item from the menu and leave the restaurant. You wait for that item to arrive and you indulge in it. Same goes for the news. Indulge in it. The newspaper is an invitation: a call to have your say.

You are probably convincing yourself that you won't make a difference. You won't. You, as an individual, won't. You, as part of a collective, will.

Too often, we end up giving power to those we complain of as being too powerful and take power away from those about whom we gripe as being too powerless.

Power is always a gift: it must be given to someone by someone else. Nobody can attain power on his own - even in the most brutal manifestation of a power struggle, a violent fight, where power is sought through brute force, the defeated can always choose to fight to the death and not grant his vanquisher power over him.

I will not explore this Hegelian thought, it being too profound to have a place reserved in the scope of the article. It should suffice for the reader to appreciate his power in granting power. To realise that he is far from being entirely powerless, as some would have us believe, as others end up believing, and as some others still - the most despicable of the bunch - wilfully believe in order to fool themselves into thinking they can shun responsibility.

As Sartre says, we are all condemned to be free and, again, that should suffice.

In any case, this article is not being joyous enough for the festive season: I blame my absolute abhorrence of sheepish attitudes for that. Nevertheless, I would not want to be a party pooper, so I'll further my point by invoking Dickens.

The gentlemen who implore Scrooge to give money in aid of the poor and destitute try to loosen his fist by pointing out that he might know of the suffering of the people they are trying to help, to which Scrooge retorts that it's not his business, and that it's enough for one to know his own business, and not interfere with other people's. That was before the old man had a change of heart.

Newspapers, you see, are much akin to the three spirits. They bring news and tidings and shed light on the issues of the day, transporting us to times and places we otherwise could not get to. Turning a blind eye after a perfunctory glance-over is no different than extinguishing this light.

The papers can only reveal the child of Man the Ghost of Christmas Present brought from the foldings of its robe; only Man can deny it.

So do the right thing this Christmas and give the gift of attention to objective and impartial journalists and the matters they bring to light. You'll be doing everyone, including your own self, a favour.

Promise yourself to start reading newspapers properly: it would make a wonderful New Year's resolution and one which is actually not so hard to keep!

If you think that all this is a tad too patronising, then you either do not need my advice, for which I congratulate you, or you should not be reading newspapers at all.

PS Whilst hoping you had a merry Christmas, I wish you all a Happy New Year, and I wish to thank readers who have praised my writing and encouraged me to write more, a task I assure you all needs no further encouragement. Your kind words are most welcome. I am sure that not everyone shares your opinion, but one cannot please everyone. And I don't intend to, either.