I wasn’t going to write this. There’s a lot of Christmas about, isn’t there, and I’ve struggled to let it in this year. My final office Christmas party was in November, we’ve not bought a tree, I’ve been behind on buying presents and in general denial about the creep of December.

But I’ve started to find myself feeling quietly festive in small, nostalgic ways. The Christmases of my childhood don’t exist any more; my parents moved out of the home we grew up in over a decade ago, and now they are hosted instead. I’m fortunate enough to have another family to share a whole other set of Christmas traditions with, and I’m conscious that this is our first as a family, and that even if we’re ill-prepared to do so, in spending Christmas with him we’ll be forging new traditions, too. In recent days I have leaned hard into Christmassing: pottering around Covent Garden in the afternoons (a chaos so fevered it buzzes with its own energy), having lunchtime halves of Guinness in tinsel-strewn pubs, singing carols in churches and pretty Georgian squares, lighting candles, riffling through the ribbon box and pulling crackers at dinner.

This is a short and sweet savour: a Christmas list not of presents to buy or things to do, but of morsels to relish from years past and ones to come. I’m sure you have your own - and I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

• making a small adventure of going to look at the nearby house that is absolutely smothered in fairylights.

• knowing who likes what in the Quality Streets / Roses tin and therefore who is your main rival in aiming for your favourite.

• wrapping presents. I genuinely love it.

• see also: buying ribbon for wrapping presents.

• Joni Mitchell’s ‘River’

• panettone for breakfast

• bread sauce, and the long, vaguely medieval means of its preparation.

• the surprise that accompanies a genuine little flurry of christmas cards.

• The Muppets Christmas Carol.

• pink noses on small people.

• everyone appearing in the kitchen at different times in their best pyjamas.

• Gaudete (both the choral and the Steeleye Span version).

• the sweet, heady smell of pine sap.

• parlour games, slightly pissed.

• brass bands popping up all over the place, so that something as banal as going out for milk or doing your commute is soundtracked by those achingly familiar tunes.

• slippers replacing all footwear.

• the moment when sprouts and clementines shift into “palette cleansers”.

• catching yourself in a mirror and realising you’re still wearing the paper cracker hat.

• the fact that Christmas is enough to defrost Londoners to the extent they will greet one another on the street with the words “Merry Christmas”.

• kids on new bikes in the park, shiny and happy and freewheeling and just a tad unsteady.

• the words “figgy pudding”.

• pubs decked out in Christmas decorations. Truly: the proper home of tinsel.

• the age-old debate about whether we’re getting dressed up for dinner or not.

• waking up a little earlier than you normally would, because there’s still a tiny bit of childish excitement left.

• the deep gratitude that you have somewhere warm and safe to spend it this year.

• losing track of what day it is.

• God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.

• trying on the old, worn-in family jokes for size and still finding them funny.

• leftovers.

  Upgrade to paid