How is it that all the warnings about weight gain come at the time of year when temptation to over-eat is at its height?

Shops are stuffed with every calorie-crammed delicacy known to man, magazines detail 20 different ways with a 40lb turkey, and there are so many Christmas dos that by the time your stomach has digested the last five-courser it's time for another.

Never in summer, when we're chomping our way through the umpteenth barbecued spare rib and burger, do health "experts" remind us that, as the newspapers reported this week, one in five women and one in six men in the UK is classed as obese, and that figure is predicted to rise to one in four by 2010. Never in summer do they warn us that healthy eating and exercise is the only way to combat the epidemic and that there is widespread prejudice against fat people.

Why do these so-called experts wait until now to tell us this? Do they want to ruin our Christmas? Do they want us to be so scared of being ostracised by the local community that we won't eat anything more fattening than a brussel sprout? What have we done to them? Christmas is riddled with warnings - we're told not to spend too much, that we'll live to regret it later.

On the surface this seems to be quite sensible - there is no doubt that we are encouraged to spend too much at Christmas, and people with children in particular are under more pressure than usual. But while we spend so much on gifts for friends and family, we tend to fork out far more later in the year on holidays. Yet you never hear those "finance experts" telling us not to be taken in by holiday adverts and to look the other way when passing the travel agents.

At Christmas, every way we turn it's don't do this, don't do that. If we ignore the over-spending brigade there's always the tree lights mob.

I don't know how we dare even attempt to put them up in the knowledge that they're one of the most lethal things known to man.

Whenever I plug a set in, I expect my hair to stand on end and my body turn to toast.

It's nice to be made aware of the danger, but is it really necessary to terrify people?

Don't drink too much, don't sit on the sofa watching telly all day, even though it's supposedly the best TV schedule of the year.

I even read a warning against kissing colleagues at office parties (you could end up at the wrong end of a harassment suit once the other person has sobered up). And businesses suffer because workers are off for the best part of two weeks.

Talk about festive cheer. I'm going to have a salad tonight to get me in the mood.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.