WELL, that's it. The relentless commercialisation of Christmas has plunged to new depths. Another tradition has gone to the dogs. It's the beginning of the end.

Supermarkets are selling costumes for nativity plays. Can you believe it?

No more shepherds in tea towels and dressing gowns. No more angels in mum's nightie and a string of tinsel. No more wonky crowns for the three kings, or a mophead hat for a sheep.

Parents are apparently storming the stores. One store chain had to rush through an emergency order for an extra 30,000 shepherds' outfits.

So who said the nativity play is dead?

I'm sure they will all look wonderful, the best dressed shepherds this side of Bethlehem. But it won't be the same, will it?

On my study wall as I write this is a picture of Croft-on-Tees playgroup nativity play in 1987. It was the year that a mashed potato firm sent a load of tea towels to me at The Northern Echo - which is why all the shepherds seem to be sponsored by Yeoman...

But the wonkiness and the amateurishness of the costumes are all part of the charm.

The fanciest ready-made costumes you can buy are for the Wise Men. Very grand. But not, I think, as grand as a red velvet opera cloak I bought for a fiver from Oxfam and which has done sterling service for a number of wise men in its time and once for St Nicholas and even an emperor, too. Very versatile. You won't get that at Asda.

But there are other costumes besides the obvious. I once trailed round endless shops looking for a red mini skirt for a nativity play. "That'll suit your little girl, " said a cheery man on the market when I finally found one on his stall.

"Actually, " I said, "it's for my son."

The man wrapped the skirt hastily and pushed it at me. But, believe it or not, red mini skirts are what Roman soldiers wore under their armour.

As I'm hopeless at sewing, tea towels and dressing gowns were about the limit of my costume-supplying ability. And, of course, the school didn't always do a nativity play, but sometimes a sort of panto instead. And this scuppered me when Smaller Son came home once and proudly announced that he was a crocodile and could I make him a costume please, ideally by the day after next.

A crocodile? A CROCODILE? I didn't have a clue. Couldn't even begin on that one. Forget tradition. That year, if Asda had done crocodile costumes, I would definitely have been first in the queue.

ERRANT parents who don't pay support for their children, could be named and shamed on a government website. Well, that's really going to terrify them, isn't it?

Any father (and it still is mainly fathers) who is so without any sense of conscience, responsibility, maturity or pride that he can cheerfully refuse to take any sort of responsibility for his own children, is hardly likely to turn a hair at seeing his name on the internet.

In fact, the only people likely to feel any shame or embarrassment are the children themselves, who will just see it as another advert to the world of how they have been abandoned by someone who was meant to love them.

AH. Cherie Blair has given the game away. She told GMTV that husband Tony gives a lot of Christmas presents but apparently goes out and actually buys only two himself - one for Cherie and one for her mum. All the rest are bought by someone else and given in his name. Sound familiar? Once, when we still had grannies but they were getting a bit beyond shopping, I looked at the mound of presents under our Christmas tree and realised that in a mammoth number of shopping trips (imagine queues, rain, hunt for parking space etc) I had bought them nearly all - A's for B, B's for C, B's for A, C's for B, and husband's for everyone. And not just had the ideas and bought them, but wrapped most too.

Most women do. Somehow along with better or worse, richer or poorer, we seem to take responsibility for our husband's present buying as well.

The only person I have ever known not to do this at all was a vicar's wife, whose husband once realised on Christmas Day that he hadn't bought anything for his mother. And his wife hadn't even reminded him. It was, she said, perfectly reasonably, absolutely nothing to do with her.

I was lost in admiration at her strength of character. Of course husband should do his own shopping without any help, suggestions or even reminders from me. I vowed I would be as tough next year. But, of course, I wasn't. But if not even Cherie Blair can manage it, what hope for the rest of us?

P.S... on Fran Hunnisett. We mentioned recently that the writer from Brotton, near Saltburn was the European winner in the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association short story competition. You can hear Fran's story, Considering Cuckoo Clocks on BBC Radio 4 this afternoon at 3.30.

SO reassuring that Kate Winslet has weighed in against the craze for size O models.

However, as for many of us, even a healthy size 8 is a long distant dream, it's all a bit academic, really isn't it