The House at Christmas

There is a Saturday in early December when our house stops being itself. The tree comes in through the front door sideways, shedding needles all the way down the hall. The boxes come down from the top shelf. Someone puts on the same record we have played every year since the children were small, and for about six hours the whole place smells of spruce and beeswax and something warm coming out of the oven.

It is, without question, my favourite day of the year.

I want to say something in defence of making a fuss. We are encouraged now to keep things simple, to resist the excess, to not overdo it. And there is real wisdom in that, particularly in December, when the pressure to produce a perfect season can turn a pleasure into a performance.

But there is a difference between excess and occasion. Excess is buying more than anyone needs. Occasion is deciding that this particular week of the year deserves the good plates. It deserves the candles at lunch. It deserves the champagne you were saving, opened on a Tuesday, for no other reason than that it is December and the house is full.

Ours never is, in the magazine sense. It leans. The lights are uneven. There is one bauble from 1998 that has lost most of its gold, and one small wooden star a child made at school, and both hang at the front where they can be seen. I have been to houses with perfectly styled trees and they are lovely, but they are not this.

A Christmas tree is not a design project. It is a record of a family. Put up the things that mean something, in whatever order they come out of the box, and stop worrying about the rest.

The cooking is where the season actually lives for me. Not the big meal — that has its own day and its own rules. The other food. The shortbread made badly by small hands. The clementines in a bowl by the door. The pot of something simmering on the back of the stove on a cold afternoon, for whoever turns up.

If you do nothing else this December, keep something warm on the stove and something sweet in a tin. It is astonishing how much a house changes when it is expecting to be fed.

We have a rule, more or less observed, that the Christmas music does not start until the tree is up. This is not piety. It is pacing. The season is short enough that it can be spent entirely on the first day, and then you have four weeks of nothing left to look forward to.

Ritual matters more than decoration, in my experience. The film you watch every year. The drive to see the lights. The carols on Christmas Eve, even if you are not certain you believe a word of them. Children remember these long after they have forgotten what was in the boxes.

Christmas does not require a beautiful house. It requires a welcoming one. There is a difference, and it has almost nothing to do with money. It has to do with warmth, and a place to sit, and something to eat, and the impression that you are glad the person came.

So make the fuss. Put out the good glasses. Let the tree lean. Invite the neighbours in for a drink on a Sunday afternoon and don't worry about the state of the hallway. The house is not the backdrop to Christmas. It is where the whole thing happens.