The spirit of Christmas past

This book, an excellent history of Christmas, made me think of a Christmas cartoon strip I once saw in Viz magazine. There’s a couple. It’s Christmas Eve. The man goes out to buy the woman a present. On the way, he steps into a pub for a few drinks. Much later, drunk, having missed the shops, he tries his luck at a petrol station. But too many people have had the same idea; the only thing left to buy is engine oil. This, anyway, is how I remember it, ending deliciously with the man in a terrible dilemma.

Why, you might ask, would this genteel book about the history of Christmas, with its sections on carols, and Christmas trees, and the choir of King’s College, Cambridge — why would all this remind me of a drunk in a petrol station? I’ll come to that in a minute. But let me first say that, if you are going to be sitting among relatives at Christmas, one of the things you’ll be talking about will be Christmas itself.