Once upon a time I lived in a house where we didn’t think about Christmas until all the birthdays were over (mid December). We had a huge (to a small child) box in the attic marked “Christmas”. It was brought downstairs a few days in advance, so we could walk round it and my parents could write and send cards. We spent Christmas Eve, or occasionally the day before, decorating the tree and the house. Decorations – baubles, wooden figures, birds, fircones, fairy lights, tinsel, strings of miniature bells – were chosen from the box because we liked them, and were mainly confined to the sitting and dining rooms.

Then I moved out.

Part 2 ->