My grandmother used to tell us that Christmas is a time for forgiveness, not just binge drinking and belching your way through the Bond movie as the 6 pounds of turkey you scoffed at dinner threaten to reappear from the nearest available orifice.
Forgiveness, of course, is the last thing that springs to mind when Auntie Enid has just given you the latest Spice Girls CD or another bloody soap-on-a-rope.
Bolton Wanderers manager Sam Allardyce is familiar with that sinking feeling after unwrapping an exotic-looking package from Japan in the summer only to discover it was full of Akinori Nishizawa.