For children, Christmas is a wonderful time of the year. It’s a special time to teach your kids the true value of consumerism.

As an adult however, it’s a time of year spent with a bunch of people you usually avoid: family.

One way to cope with this is to take a genuine interest in them and what they’ve been up to during the year. This is hard work and not recommended.

Who really cares that your cousin is now trying life as a vegan or your nephew is doing really well after the accident? Not me.

Over the years I’ve built up a few strategies to deal with the big day. Like the gifts you’ve always secretly wanted, here they are:

Lone Wolf

This is my standard go to. Just avoid any actual socialising with anyone.

If someone asks you how you’ve been during the year say ‘fine’ and then drain your full glass of whiskey while staring at them without blinking. Then excuse yourself by saying, ‘I need to get another drink.’

Do this six or seven times and you’ll find you’re free to find a quiet corner and won’t be bothered.

The lone wolf strategy requires you to avoid all conversational entanglements. Pick books off the shelf and pretend to be really interested in them, walk off from group conversations and just awkwardly stand by yourself off to the side.

Play with your mobile phone a lot.

Consider taking up smoking – it gets you outside and away from everyone. The health risks are a fair trade off.

During the Christmas lunch, keep getting up to fetch a drink or pretend to talk on your mobile in the backyard. Make it sound like your ordering a hit on someone.

Divide and Conquer

For some, a big family fight is what makes Christmas awful but if you want to avoid spending all afternoon talking to ‘hands on’ Uncle Gary, they are a godsend.

Spend the time before Christmas lunch really fuelling the fire. I suggest serving sparkling white with orange juice. It makes it very hard for people to work out how much they’ve actually had to drink.

Then over lunch, it’s time to light the fuse. Good topics are former family Christmases, parenting, politics, whether Uncle Simon really killed all those people and the inheritance.

Once the fighting starts, just wait ten minutes or so then announce they are all ruining Christmas and storm off to the pub.

Imparting Wisdom

In life there are two positions in a social situation, either you are reacting to someone or they are reacting to you. A difficult person, in essence, is someone who is always making you react to them.

In a family Christmas context, this is the relative that makes outrageous statements, shows up late and keeps trying to kiss you under the mistletoe.

Make sure this person is you. Nothing keeps the relos at bay more than this tactic.

Give strong views on everything. If it’s international politics, state loudly we should just bomb the lot of them; if it’s the local council, offer to bomb them too. Take contrary positions even if that position is insane. Just channel Fox News or Donald Trump. I'm aware in some families that could endear you to them so just swap and channel Waleed Aly.

A few Christmases using this technique and you can say you’re not coming to the next and nobody will be upset.

Pour Me Another

Medical science tells us alcohol is a terrific coping mechanism for almost every social situation. Its other benefits are that it’s relatively cheap and has no proven negative side effects.

At a family Christmas, alcohol is your only true friend. It understands you, it cares for you and it wants to hold you in its warm embrace while making soothing noises.

The great thing about drinking a lot is that it can make any conversation fun for you and awkward for others. Definitely consider raising conspiracy theories when you’re really drunk. People will really appreciate it.

A big selling point of this strategy is that after lunch, you can fall asleep on the couch and no one will mind.

Agree, a Bit Too Much

A fun way to make family Christmas fly by is to agree with everything someone says to you but go that bit further. This is great for politics, casual racism and sexism.

Here’s an example:

Relative: It does worry me a bit when you here about all the muslims coming to Australia.

You: I couldn’t agree more. What we want is to bring on the final battle and cleanse this earth of all non-believers.

I've known this to work so well the person who did it got locked up by ASIO. No Christmas gathering for him ever again. Mission accomplished (for real this time).

Boring for Australia

Imagine if being boring was an international sport. You want to be the Don Bradman of boring. This is insanely fun to do.

Talk in a monotone and very slowly. Embrace the awkward pause. Forget humour and refuse to understand sarcasm. This will drive people crazy.

Great topics to talk about are cricket (but not with cricket fans), the weather, your work, dreams you’ve had and incredibly detailed descriptions of which way you take to work.

In Conclusion

Family Christmases are something you’ll only have to do until the end of your life. With the above strategies, you should be able to cope.

A word of warning however, don’t try and implement all these at once as I did one year. It results in tears, an unexplained rash and several months of community service.