In the worst possible taste

What are the rules of taste at Christmas? How might the fastidious chart a neat path through this garish and cluttered carnival of unreflective consumption? How might dignity be maintained in this tinselled and glitter-balled waste of space?

Actually, how might we design it better? Nicky Haslam once and quite correctly, without a flicker of irony, advised me that ‘coloured lights are common’.