I’m guessing that a lot of readers know that yesterday is called Boxing Day because traditionally it was the time when the wealthy boxed up presents for the less wealthy. I also suspect many will have had, may well still be having, a dilemma about whether to persevere with this particular festive ritual.

I’m thinking of those people who, although they have done well out of 21st-century capitalism, would like still to believe in 20th-century socialism and so worry that a minor act of 19th-century paternalism looks a lot like 13th-century feudalism.

I used to know what I thought about tipping. As a 14-year-old paper boy, delivering the Hull Daily Mail six nights a week, Monday to Saturday, for £1.50, which worked out at roughly 19p an hour, I had no problem whatsoever at Christmas 1978. Risible 10p piece? Unimaginably generous fiver? Inappropriate tumbler of scotch? Bring them on.

Neither did I complain when, as a milkman’s assistant, slipping on that special Northern Dairies coat every Saturday and Sunday, my boss gave me a slice of his Christmas box every year. Did I say “Lenny! No! How could you be so condescending? I feel oppressed!”? I did not. I said: “Thanks very much.”

And then I went to university and started my career and I became confused. For a while in the Nineties, no longer in a position to receive gratuities, nor yet to distribute them, I would have gone along with Mr Pink in Reservoir Dogs when he tries to persuade the other gangsters not to tip the waitress in the diner because it’s patronising and depresses the recipient’s official wage.

Then I worked out that while tipping can be socially awkward, not tipping someone who expects it is considerably more so. This realisation coincided with making some decent money, and I went to the other extreme, peeling off tenners to any passing manual worker, good, bad or indifferent, sometimes if they had only the most tenuous connection to my property. Finally, I got older and wiser and managed to prise the twin emotions generosity and guilt apart.

And so now I act out of a combination of common decency, just deserts, personal preference and self-interest. Which means the cleaner and, this year, the builders were duly rewarded for being great, the binmen were kept sweet because they might be narks for the recycling police, and the milkman did well for old times’ sake and because he’s an emotional man, somewhat overinvested in his job. Yet once again the postman got nothing because he’s surly and useless and it would be wrong to encourage him.

Basically, I’ve decided that worrying about tipping is like a man worrying whether he should tell a woman she is beautiful: there might be the odd one in a thousand who resents it, the money or the compliment, but by and large, you’re on rock-solid ground, and you should go ahead and do it. But only if you mean it.

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