Every 6 January I breathe a sigh of relief as I take down and store the enormous number of Christmas decorations with which I festoon my house. ‘Never again!’ I say to Percy, ‘Let’s go away next Christmas.’ But when the following November rolls around, all is forgotten and the boxes of goodies are brought out with much excitement and anticipation and I start to deck the halls all over again. Christmas is a joyous time in our house and I never fail to revel in it. I’m not a religious person, nor am I an atheist. I’m more of an agnostic, really. But I was raised with Christian values by a Church of England mother to the amusement of my Jewish father and my ‘hovering Buddhist’ uncle George, who’d been in a Japanese concentration camp. I was told that I could choose my own religious beliefs ‘when I grew up’.
Multicultural as we were, Christmas was joyously celebrated each year, even during the declining days of the second world war.
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