Sandra Chapman: 'Christmas may be old, but it’s beautiful and well worth the time and effort it demands of us each year'

I once had a guest for Christmas who decided to ring some relatives just as we were all ready to sit at the table for the first course.

I chose not to serve anything until she had made what she promised would be a quick call. So we waited, and waited, and waited. I took myself off to peep around the door and tell her we were waiting.

Fifteen minutes later she arrived back at the dining room and sat down only to rise immediately again to do a call-of-nature. It’s little incidents like these that make Christmas memorable. It’s a story that comes out every year just as I’m about to serve my guests. ‘Please don’t do what so-and-so did on me about this moment years ago’ I tell them’. I’ve learned to pick my guests carefully.

Strangely enough I’ve not even got into the Christmas spirit yet. The weather isn’t helping. One minute we’re promised snow for Christmas; in the later bulletins the forecasters are less sure. But the sky at night has been magical. I’m so glad I didn’t miss the arrival of the full moon this week. As children we were told the moon was always big at Christmas to show Santa the way. I believed every word my sky-at-night loving mother said. She loved Christmas and we her children inherited her ability to make it magical for our own children.

I’m sure the season is good for us all. When I read this week that a senior civil servant who ‘presided over the disastrous evacuation of Kabul’ will retire now with a £2m pension and that 20 other civil servants running government departments are ‘entitled to a pension each of £1.1m on average’ I wasn’t particularly envious. I thought of my own pensions, a mere fraction of those huge amounts, and felt no envy. I think that’s down to the Christmas spirit which envelops me every year.

Having lots of money may be nice, but I like the Christmases of old when the not-so-well-off were able to indulge in some luxuries, people sang carols around the area and the really poor were delivered parcels of food on Christmas Eve.

Christmas for me, still, is the making of the decorations with green, red and white crepe paper, carefully retrieving the glass balls for the tree, some of which I’ve had since childhood and finding the right spot for the tree.

My very modern grandchildren will probably think their granny too old fashioned for this world. But I hate to see this special season which begins this month being laughed at or criticised by a new generation for whom Christmas carols are just hilarious, not worth the effort of learning. Yet, it is a time for renewing friendships, giving to those in need and drawing together separated families. This old style festival is hardly suited to a modern society but it is at the heart of precious family memories which shouldn’t be forgotten.