Right, I’ve slagged off the whole boiling lot in my previous post, so you’d be forgiven for thinking that I hate Christmas with a passion, and in many ways I do. But Christmas is, believe it or not, my favourite time of year in many ways.

Are you surprised that a bad-tempered old cynic such as myself should make such a statement? Well probably not, because there’s a pretty obvious vein of romanticism close to the surface which my regular readers will have had no trouble noticing.

When my family do Christmas we do indeed buy presents, but not particularly expensive ones. There’s usually a couple of books to be found around the tree, some music (mostly from me), some worthless but nevertheless rather lovely rubbish from a junk or antiques shop and a small handful of daft but thoughtful things that for some reason or another made us think of the person in question during the year. We don’t spend much, but we do tend to bring nice things for each other.

What really makes Christmas for me is the peace and quiet and the cosiness. We cook, a lot. The meals are long and prepared with care. Two or three people spend most of the day cooking, and then we sit down in the evening with candles and the fire lit and spend about four or five hours eating and chattering (see pic, top). During the day we shop for the next meal, and walk in the countryside (we tend to spend Christmas out in France but if we’re in Edinburgh, as we will be next year, we’ll probably go for a walk down by Cramond or in the Botanics, if they’re open).

There’s lots of music, from my Mum’s classical to my brother’s jazzier stuff, to my Dylan and Waits, but all of it is cosy , downbeat and emotionally solid, without being miserable. Mum gets quite keen on having lots of traditional, hand-crafted decorations, Mrs. Toad spends a little too extravagantly on wine, I joust with Mum for control of the stereo, Dad reads his books and my brother makes sure he re-visits all his childhood rituals with all of us – walks with Dad, long late night chats with me, flavoured with new music and gin, and cooking with Mum.

So as much as I loathe what Christmas is, I absolutely love what we do with it. We eat, we relax and we spend time together. The cold and dark and the fire make it all very slow-paced and quite magical, and generally one of my favourite times of the year. How can you build a proper family if you don’t do this – take time to be together, to talk and to do things as a group? We’re not even remotely religious, but it’s times like this we reaffirm all those ties and relationships and traditions that make our family so close, and despite the horrors of the tinsel and the shopping frenzy around us, I wouldn’t swap our family Christmases for anything.

If this doesn’t bring a tear to your eye then you have no soul worth saving:  Tom Waits – Take it With Me
Sheryl Crow – Home (Yes, Sheryl Crow)
Evan Dando – All My Life
The greatest and truest christmas song of all time, and yes I did post it last year, deal with it: Tom Lehrer – A Christmas Carol