Merry Christmas, smuthounds! The Higgins household is filled with fancy ass chocolates, naff Christmas films and plenty of lubrication of a boozy nature. I have also been steadily consuming Magical Elves, the very best of festive confectionery!

‘Tis the season to be jolly and all that, and the Day spills on the star's holiday traditions. Jennifer Aniston gives books. Jack Nicholson once got coal for a present, and Christian Slater is a Trekkie. Who knew? And do you really believe that Jennifer Lopez only wants handmade gifts? The woman whose diamonds have diamonds? Me neither.

Luckily, our girl Mariah Carey makes no such pretence about keeping things low key. Homemade cookies? Vouchers for ‘some of your time'? Pah!

"Christmas is Mariah's favourite holiday and Nick knows she's not the kind of girl who believes it's the thought that counts."

What credit crunch, eh Mariah? Hope you've got your Santa bikini all ready to go, love!

Read more about Mariah getting into the festive spirit here.

Cameron Diaz celebrates Christmas with a Cuban feast. Reese Witherspoon goes to church. Charlize Theron says they "don't really celebrate it in South Africa." Which is weird because Faye Smythe, who plays Tania on Shortland Street, is from South Africa and says in the New Idea "it's a big tradition to go to church."

The Day also reports that newly split Madonna and Guy Ritchie are already quibbling over who should get to have their sons when Christmas rolls around. Understandably, they both want to spend the festive season with the boys. Guy wants to give them heaps of presents, a traditional Christmas tree and their fill of sweets and Christmas treats.

So what's Madonna got to offer? Four hours of Kabbalah instruction at their New York home, ‘followed by a lunch of steamed fish and macrobiotic vegetables.'

In the name of child cruelty, give those boys to Guy! It's too late to save Lourdes!

In shocking news, Madonna may be willing to bend her wishes to spend Christmas with her three kids and Guy at the family's country estate in Wiltshire - but only if rumoured new love Alex Rodriguez can come along too. He doesn't seem too bothered about spending Christmas with his kids, but he's been long known round the gossip traps as a first-class a-hole.

They may look like the picture perfect family, but it's not all mugs of eggnog and singing Christmas carols round the piano chez Beckham when December 25 arrives. David Beckham's Dad, Ted, gets the cold shoulder round theirs on Christmas Day each year. He hasn't been invited round Beckingham Palace for seven years!

Word is Victoria and her clan have never warmed to the East London kitchen fitter, and David grew distant from his father after his parents divorced and Ted Beckham wrote a book about life with his son.

"Victoria needs to feel in control and she's making sure she gets the Christmas she wants."

A couple of buckets of chardonnay and two honey roasted peanuts it is, then!

The WHO mag runs a story about Jennifer Aniston (who doesn't want you to think of her as Hollywood's poor little rich girl) breaking with tradition -a new movie, a new man...blahblah. She cooks a chili for Christmas, talks about her close bond with Marley and Me co-star Owen Wilson, and doesn't shy away from wittering on about new love John Mayer. They're in love, y'all, and they really, really want you to know it. Oh, and Jen has a movie coming out. Isn't the timing just impeccable?

"When I see him with his guitar," says Jen, "it's like that instrument becomes a channel for his whole being."

His instrument. Actually, I don't want to think about John Mayer's instrument at all.

John also has music on the brain in the Weekly, saying he's thinking of recording a duet with girlfriend Jen. "Do you know that girl can sing? She does it when she doesn't think anybody's paying attention. I said to her the other night, ‘There's a track in there.' I think she could kill it."

Attn: celebs. Unless you are Sonny and Cher or Johnny and June, please shut your singing holes when you get the idea of making music with your loved one. That is all.

In the week's completely disgusting but equally compelling news, 40-year-old south Australian woman Jenny Deaves has broken up with her father/babydaddy/live-in lover John. The pair made headlines earlier in the year after starting a sexual relationship while Jenny was in her thirties, with two kids and newly split from her husband.

Father and daughter had two kids together. A son died, they insist from complications which had nothing to do with their weird genetic combo, and they have a toddler daughter, Celeste. I hope they're saving up for a lifetime of therapy for that girl's ‘my sister is my mum and my dad is my grandpa' issues. Anyway, onwards and upwards! She's now engaged to bisexual Shayne Farrell, who lives in the house she still shares with her father.

I don't know where to start with this one, so I'll just say eeeeewwwwwwwww.

The Woman's Day lead this week with Angie and Brad and a story that's already been floating round the traps - if they weren't too good to be true already, the Jolie-Pitts make their own Christmas presents and shun expensive festive season gestures. They manage to bypass all the unpleasant Christmas hoo-ha us mere mortals have to put up with. Their presents probably descend from the heavens on a beautiful cloud, with harp playing angels singing in accompaniment. No unhelpful couriers for them!

Although they're not such divine beings after all - word is Angie sucks big time in the culinary department, and last year the family's Christmas meal consisted of Happy Meals from McDonald's.

Maybe those six kids should up sticks and head over to Guy Ritchie's as well?

New Idea reports the pair are planning to adopt another African girl, also a theory spouted in the NW.

The Weekly tells tales of Angelina Jolie weeping and wailing about Jen's recent spat of tell-all interviews.

"One close friend says Angelina sobbed: "Why won't she let it go? Every time Brad or I talk about our love, she sticks in a knife and twists it."

I don't buy it. Somehow I don't picture Angelina as a weeper.

Woman's Day breaks the news that graying footy star turned TV jackass Matthew Ridge has knocked up his missus of just over a year, former TrueBliss girlbander Carly Binding. See pics of them strolling through the park, and shopping in a chi-chi inner city baby store. I go there sometimes to get stuff for baby showers. It's full of well groomed women telling kids called Jiminy to ‘use your inside voice.'

But I digress!

Ridgey's son Boston asked who was pregnant when the couple told him to expect a new brother or sister. Fifteen-year-old Jaime was more to the point, reportedly saying "Dad, don't be stupid, you are too immature,' reveals the source."

Nicole Whippy from Outrageous Fortune is also in the family way! How will she fit into Kasey's leathers? She decided to try for a baby with partner Tom - and hit the target, so to speak, just three days later.

It's the first Outrageous Fortune baby, apparently. I hope they bestow a suitably Westie name upon it. Any suggestions?

Actress Kate Walsh and her husband Alex Young are getting divorced after just 15 months of marriage. Fifteen months? I've had cans of tuna for longer than that.

NI spreads the rumour that she was getting too close to her Private Practice co-star David Sutcliffe, who plays Addison Montgomery Shepherd's boyfriend Kevin Nelson.

"Tom Cruise tells friends he gets ‘double teamed' all the time these days."

Were you thinking that too? I know! But no, it's not a pervy Scientology sex romp, but a rather disturbing story intro in the Weekly. The tag team in question is in fact wife Katie Holmes and toddler daughter Suri, and their efforts to get what they want out of the large-toothed movie star.

Meanwhile WHO's on a campaign for the redemption of Tom Cruise - while he's on a campaign to simultaneously flog his new film Valkyrie (general consensus: steaming turd), and prove to a once adoring public that he's really Not That Crazy.

"He looked kind of hot. Seriously. Gone was the bad hair that alternated between Nazi and Beatle eras, gone too was the hint of man boobs and the stuffy grandpa three-piece suits....more importantly, Cruise had ditched the too chipper, slightly manic persona that had made him a human punchline."

It reveals that Tommy Girl made nice with TV anchor Matt Lauer, whom he called ‘glib,' and sometimes cranks out a performance of ‘You've Lost That Loving Feeling' when required in the er, bedroom area.

Now that is a YouTube clip that I never want to see.

And that's all from the mags this week!