Yes, the elderly can be lonely at Christmas, but here's how to solve it

The thing I like best about Christmas shopping – truthfully, the only thing I like about it – is the chit-chat. I order everything from comestibles to birthday presents online, but come December, I like to browse.

I want to see lovely things, run my hands over lovely things and when I select a lovely thing – a scarf for my sister-in-law, or a cocktail shaker for a friend – I insist on a bit of banter at the till.

Those are the little endorphin boosts that make the crush bearable and lend an upward thermal to the the stifling department store air.

Humans are social creatures; we need interactions, major and minor, to maintain our mental health. I’m just the right side of the invisibility that settles on the middle-aged. I’m also noisome and nosey and, being Irish, fall easily into classless conversation with brickies or Bishops. But I totally understand that not everyone shares my blithe garrulousness.

Some are old. Some are lonely. A shocking 16 per cent are both for most of the time, according to new figures from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), which has urged pensioners to reach out, join choirs and read to small children as a way of staving off Alzheimers, which is linked to isolation.

But just as the blanket term “working mum” can mean anything from a part-time checkout assistant to a full-time CEO with children, this notion of “pensioners” isn’t very helpful.

Unconscious bias is the name given to the prejudices we hold, the stereotypes we perpetuate, the pigeonholes into which we push people for convenience’s sake.

It doesn’t mean we’re bad. Just in a hurry; a hurry to classify and categorise, make note and move on.

In our culture, growing old – more saliently, being seen to grow old – is treated at best like an affliction, and at worst like a shameful dereliction of duty.

So if being old is something to be avoided, is it any wonder the knock-on effect is a reluctance to interact with the elderly? It’s not done with any malice, just casually, absent-mindedly. Whereas we regard the young as individuals, the old are an amorphous mass or, more damningly, “an NHS timebomb”.

Here’s a cod-psychological litmus test for baby boomers and their offspring that very often reveals more than is strictly comfortable.

Close your eyes. Imagine an elderly person. Imagine them sitting at home. Imagine them going to the shop for a magazine.

Imagine it’s copy of this month’s Vogue. Imagine them eating lunch. Imagine that lunch is seafood linguine. In a restaurant. Imagine them listening to music, from their youth. Imagine that music is Fatboy Slim. Imagine they are you.

The more times you had to alter the very first visualisation, the more inherent bias in your attitude. If, like most people, your imaginary old person changed outfits and social contexts more often than Mr Benn, don’t be dismayed. If it’s any consolation, we all make pat assumptions

Getting “the old” to join a choir is a marvellous ambition, and Nice has exorted councils to provide details about professionally led community choirs.

But what elderly people actually need isn’t information, it’s an invitation; from another person, a person like me or you. To stop and share a cup of tea, to chitchat or just join in.

I sing in my the choir at church, and the feelgood factor at Christmas (and, more importantly, Easter) leaves my spirits soaring. I don’t doubt for a moment the health benefits.

But much as I’d like to chivvy local pensioners into singing Bach’s Oratorio, I believe that before hymns should come rhymes.

Offering the old the opportunity to read to the young represents the real breakthrough here, because genuine, strong communities are mixed, intergenerational.

Little children hold few assumptions about the old and those they do hold tend to be positive and viewed through the prism of grandparents who are sources of warmth, time, indulgence and comfort.

In children’s eyes, the elderly have status and authority, they are individuals with stories and wisdom. Inviting them into our schools, nurseries and libraries would remind us all they belong to the warp and weft of society’s fabric.

It’s tragic that one in six of our pensioners only speak to another person once a week. For one in ten, it’s once a month.

Christmas is all about fireside cosiness and family. But it’s also a time for goodwill, kindness and invitations. After all, some day – if we’re lucky – we shall grow old, too.