Who's The Daddy: Not the Grinch this year, in fact we’re doing it twice

Oh yes, like the old ladies who peer into your pram to gawp at your baby say, the days are long but the years are short.

It’s hard to know what a successful Christmas looks like, especially since three of our last four have been cancelled and ruined by Covid. But to get the most out of the festive season, I’d suggest this - lower your expectations.

If you can get through it without a blazing row and enjoy a lovely Christmas dinner together, then that should be the summit of your ambitions and is a genuine cause for a special celebration of the liquid variety. Starting at lunch.

One of the reasons why Christmas can often be such a crushing disappointment is because so many of us bet the farm on it. We try to make it as perfect as we can, often by throwing money at it that we haven’t really got.

And as the NHS, post-Fergie Manchester United and bankrupt lottery winners down the years have discovered to their cost, burning through money like the KLF on a remote Scottish island does not bring you happiness or success. Quite the opposite, which is misery and failure I suppose.

Maybe it’s because these days Christmas starts around the same time as the Champions League. Back in the day when I was a kid we put our decorations up the weekend before Christmas Day and they came down on January 2. There you go, done and dusted in less than a fortnight. And nobody’s house looked like Las Vegas.

Now it’s a marathon, not a sprint. It just goes on too long. And by the time December 25 comes around we’ve been banging on about it so much that it has lost its meaning. If you’re putting up your tree while you can still smell the fireworks from Bonfire Night then you need to have a strong word with yourself. When people ask me what I want for Christmas I always say the same thing.

Nothing. Maybe a couple of days off and a big bag of logs for the fire. And then they look at me a bit weird. But once you hit your mid-50s chances are you’ve got enough stuff, indeed it feels almost cathartic to stick your precious bits and bobs on eBay or lug them down to a charity shop.

If this sounds like the Grinch then I couldn’t give two hoots. Maybe it’s because over the last few years we’ve spent thousands and had a Covid-riddled time of it. In fact, thinking about it, that probably is the main reason.

But this time we’re having two goes at it. We’ll be celebrating Christmas again in the third week in January when Daughter #2 finishes her six-month tour of duty working the kids club on a massive ship that cruises around the Caribbean.

So if you know us in real life and see a tree in our window in the middle of next month, that’s the reason. We haven’t gone nuts or died.

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