Preparing for Christmas is an exhausting process. It starts ever earlier, goes on for longer and involves more planning, negotiation, hand-wringing and cash-frittering than the average royal wedding. You know you’re going to love it when the day itself dawns (usually at about 5am when the first choruses of ‘Has he been? Has he been?’ echo from the children’s bedrooms), but you’re not sure you’ll be in a fit state to enjoy it.

So why not treat yourself to a bit of pre-Christmas pampering in a bid to stay just the right side of sane.

If you like to leave things until the last minute, the eco-friendly Titanic Spa in Linthwaite, Huddersfield (titanicspa.com) is offering customers a real festive treat with a day in the spa and a variety of treatments for just £75 on Christmas Eve.

Fifty lucky bookers will be given the opportunity to indulge in the saunarium, crystal steam room, aromatherapy room, ice room, traditional sauna cabin, experience showers, plunge pool, footbaths and mud chamber (for an additional cost). They will also be offered a light buffet lunch and the chance to use the gymnasium, swimming pool, poolside sauna, steam room and relaxation lounge before choosing between a facial and a full body massage.

For chaps on the verge of a nervous breakdown, buckling under the intense pressure of choosing the perfect perfume for their beloved (is she a Tom Ford fan or channelling Chanel?), the five-star Cedar Court Grand in York (cedarcourtgrand.co.uk) offers a special ‘re-charge spa day’ just for men at £145.

The package includes a one-hour personalised back treatment, a 30-minute reviving facial, a hand scrub and nail tidy and last, but definitely not least, a slap-up lunch in the Grill Room.

If you’re hoping to live happily ever after the Sleeping Beauty Spa Break at Rudding Park, near Harrogate (ruddingpark.co.uk), could give you your fairytale ending.

Prices start at £182 for a three-course dinner, bed and a full Yorkshire breakfast in a luxury Ribston Wing room with a 50-minute bespoke treatment added in somewhere along the way.

You can plump for a massage, facial, a hammam steam experience, manicure or pedicure and, when you’re completely relaxed, you can even hire the hotel’s private 14-seat cinema for a bit of extra indulgent screen time (White Christmas, perhaps?).

And finally, what could be more festive than the Spa by Candlelight package at the Feversham Arms Hotel in Helmsley (fevershamarmshotel.com)?

This £65 dusk range of relaxing treatments includes a Bento Box evening meal and either a facial, deep-tissue massage, manicure or pedicure, all carried out in soft (and very flattering) candlelight.