I feel strongly that, in this season of goodwill to all men and women, I need to address a subject that divides the nation: fairy lights.
When I say, “divides the nation”, I should explain that 99.4 per cent support fairy lights and 0.6 are opposed to them on either aesthetic grounds or lunacy.
And, for once, I am with the majority: let there be fairy lights. And not just at Christmas. Like many leading citizens, I have fairy lights on all year round, draped around the big, brassy mirror in the sitting-room. There’s an option with the tech to have the lights flashing, but I believe this to be a step too far and a touch disorientating when watching TV.
That’s what I do when watching box sets: dim the lights, apart from the fairies and a couple of electronic candles that change colour. It’s right cosy, which is a feeling I need all year, not just at Christmas.
The Danes famously call this sort of thing hygge, though to them it often involves dinner-parties, which are rarely cosy and more often a pain that we try to avoid.
My friend who watches TV with me has no concept of hygge, keeping all the lights in her house blazing like an industrial car park. She doesn’t like candles on safety grounds and dreads the onset of dark winter nights, which I love.
The thing is, it’s not about the night, it’s about the light. That is to say, the light you create indoors which, ideally, should be twinkly.
The best thing about Christmas is the decorations and, though a man in my position can no longer be seen putting up such fripperies (even my fairy lights have to be discreet), I like it when other people do. I even like decorations on the outside of houses and will often stand and stare at them until moved on by the police.
Obviously, some people go too far with huge displays that, rather than twinkle, blink on and off incessantly like the high street at yonder Las Vegas. Ideally, these people would be arrested on Christmas Day, with their presents distributed to the needy or to the bearded person who tipped off the police.
But, alas, we live in a fallen world, ken? That doesn’t stop us forgetting what Christmas is all about: cosiness. Of course, its origins lie in pagan festivals of midwinter, which ought to be in January by my reckoning. That’s the trouble with Christmas: it peaks too early, leaving too much winter still to come.
The pagan idea was that we were half-way through a period of relative privation, but had stored enough grub to make a feast and declare a fie upon the darkness. There was also a rule saying every household had to brew up a massive amount of ale, though elderly females were allowed to have Malibu instead.
We live in more, so to say, enlightened times now, and buy our ales in packs from the supermarket, though some people still make Malibu home brew.
The main thing is to make ourselves replete with grub and grog, and to build snug havens of twinkly lights against the cold, evil darkness outside. In that spirit, let me wish you Happy Hygge Day tomorrow, folks.
