Best Christmas gift: Time with MUM AND DAD!

Parents should spend more time baking, dressing up and making decorations with their children if they want them to have a truly memorable Christmas. They should spend less time tracking down the latest games console. That is the advice of a leading British charity which has published a 16-page guide, Batteries Not Included, to activities for the Christmas and New Year holiday. The free booklet contains more than 100 simple ideas, including making snowy footprints to show where Santa Claus has been, a treasure hunt and a home cinema evening. Kids are more likely to cherish the memory of such activities than the toys they get, says the society.

It is conducting a two-year investigation into modern British childhood and has discovered that children's No. 1 priority is spending time with their parents. Yet parents often give their kids gifts instead of time, said spokesman Tim Linehan. "We are not trying to write off TV or computer games … but these are more solitary pursuits than the games of the past. Our finding that children have fewer close friends than a generation ago, and that more children have no good friends at all, cannot be dismissed."