I DO LOVE Christmas. Or rather, I love the build-up to Christmas as the day itself is riven with too much cooking-related stress and in-law tension to be enjoyable for anyone over the age of 12. And what I relish most are the traditions we observe during Advent.
All families have their own traditions and quirks. My own starts on 1 December, not a day earlier and not a day later, and is obsessively observed. I buy and decorate the biggest, fattest tree that can be squeezed through our front door (which invariably means that we can neither sit on the sofa nor see the television, as it fills our drawing room). I dig out the kitsch knitted nativity set my husband and I bought 17 years ago after we spotted it in a shop display. I adorn the house with the rather unusual Christmas lights my sister-in-law sent me from France; I’m never quite sure if they’re actually as lovely as I think they are,
