Unhappy families are all alike; every happy family is happy in its own way.

I think your attitude toward Christmas depends on your early experiences and the bounds of your imagination for presents need not be about money but depend on the fact that you have given time and thought into people you love and like.

Every year in the run up to Christmas, there are articles published declaring that Christmas has become too commercialised, lost its magic, become an empty ritual. I usually skip reading them. People declare they don’t want presents or confess they are not getting anything for adults. As my mother, who lived to be 92 and loved Xmas used to ask, ‘When wa…