Christmas Spirit

The 1st of December. That’s when the Christmas festivities should begin. Right? Even though the Christmas lights are switched on in mid-November, and Love Actually counts down the six weeks before, I have always believed that Christmas doesn’t really start until you open the first door on your advent calendar. But this year, I feel differently.

It was early November when I got my first real pang of Christmas, while watching a man who, like me, was stuck in traffic. There were cars jammed everywhere, stuck in limbo between one set of lights and another. For some reason, I immediately began singing Chris Rea’s Driving Home for Christmas; the sight of this stranger on his commute, teamed with the cold temperature and my visible hot puffs of breath, ignited the festive cheer in me. My heart melted for all the families for whom Christmas is a time of giving and sharing and being together, despite all the odds.

However much I romanticised the stranger driving home scene, it really was just an every day traffic jam, an ordinary Tuesday – so perhaps I was just totes emosh about something else. The only event that comes to mind is, not too long before, I won an LK Bennett skirt on Instagram. I mean, yes, it sounds pathetic, but I’d been coveting this very skirt since I first laid eyes on it almost three months earlier, knowing that I probably wouldn’t drop the £250 price tag (thanks to one of many looming bills of the same cost). When I discovered that I’d won the giveaway, it felt like all my Christmases had come at once; my wish had come true (the skirt was mine) and the horrid bill was paid! I’d say that’s a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why my Christmas spirit appeared early.

Today, Christmas has well and truly settled in; the lights have been switched on in Dundee’s beautiful city square and I’m firmly on the tinsel train, happily spreading Christmas cheer to one and all as I pass. Tomorrow, I’m attending Dundee’s Christmas lecture (author Ian Rankin will be in conversation with Professor Sue Black) before dinner and champagne with my girls. Usually, we meet up in December, but we’re all so busy that we had to choose the last weekend in November for our Christmas celebrations. Perhaps yet another reason why I’m feeling Christmassy now…

The evidence suggests that there are indeed varying factors in my premature Christmas joy, but I’m not complaining. Rather, I’m revelling in the fuzzy feeling, using the energy to prance around the city square at night shooting a Christmas style post in zero degree temperatures. Why? Well, why not? It’s Christmas! Plus, I wanted to show you my new skirt, and hopefully spread a little Christmas joy your way too.

I’m Wearing: knit, Monsoon; skirt, LK Bennett; shoes, LK Bennett. (Balloons from Party Time, Broughty Ferry, Dundee.)