My friend Yvonne says she asked herself, why go through the same routine as lots of other people over the festive season, and decided enough was enough. She remembered the magic of a child’s Christmas when she was young, with a stocking and presents like new jumpers hand-knitted by kind aunties, but she couldn’t see that it was good for families to ‘beggar themselves’, as she put it, to meet rising expectations these days.

Are you hungry? I am a little – haven’t had breakfast yet – but I’m not worried because I know I’ll get something to eat within an hour. Why do I ask? A few thousand years ago, before they changed the name of the midwinter festival, it was a time when rituals were performed to ensure the return of the sun. The death and rebirth of the sun mattered very much to people who feared that if the days didn’t lengthen again, they wouldn’t be able to grow the crops they relied on for their survival.