On wondering what to write for this year’s Christmas weasel, I had, somewhat unimaginatively, considered yet another excerpt from my favourite seasonal reading, A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas. To my mind, it can’t be beaten and I wait impatiently for the day when Harrison, currently 15 months old, can be given his own copy. He’ll be so happy. I know this because his mother will tell me so whether it be the truth or not. And it will be a shorter wait than this year’s gift which, being authored by Robert Macfarlane, might be read around the time of his twenty-first birthday; at which point I’ll be either dead or enfeebled so no-one will have to say ‘what a splendid present that was’.

Thomas begins his (to my mind) masterpiece with the reflection that ‘one Christmas was so much like another, in those years’. Of course it was: the whole point of Christmas is continuity; to replicate something known and pleasurable. Well, at least for a few short years of childhood excitement. This week, I’ve been listening to Laurie Lee’s reminiscences of Christmas and they’re no different. Unsurprising I suppose, given that he and Thomas lived and wrote at much the same time. Women abound in kitchens, children have adventures in the snow and men – well men seem to have no useful part to play. Apart from smoking cigars by the fire.

In my mid-sixties, one’s reflections might start with ‘one year is so much like another’. They’re not really. 2016 was memorable for the number of icons who left without warning, beginning with Bowie. In the aftershock, it became tediously de rigeur to listen to who’d gone next. 2017 is memorable only for the fact that it’s passed so speedily. And a good job too you might say as it’s dismissed all thoughts of continuity and expectation. Now the unexpected is to be expected.

Anyway folks, grasp the family while you can and have a very merry time. I intend to do so.