Christmas Eve is my favourite day of the year, partly because it’s my birthday and you get to open some gifts early and also because some of our happiest memories are about the anticipation of Christmas. For chuldren, of course, is about presents but it’s the silly/ridiculous gifts that give adults the most joy, particularly when they are for other people. Christmas gold they, like PG Wodehouse’s story Jeeves and the Yuletide Spirit, never lose their power to make you laugh. The time a neighbour wrapped up a packet of red lentils in beautiful red wrapping paper and sent it over to my mother on Christmas Eve, my aunt’s indignation when her cousin gave her a pair of Christmas knickers in a size 22 - “I’ve a good mind to give them back to her and say ‘Olive they’re too big for me’.” Then the sweet friend who came every Christmas Eve with a beautifully wrapped mouse for the cat which she placed carefully and ceremoniously underneath the tree. Every Christmas Eve my mum and dad took me to
Elizabeth-Noelle, writer, clairvoyant poet.