On top of everything else, or maybe underneath it, Christmas is a season of trying to get you to feel something other than you naturally feel as a pithy human being just wishing you could get a good night's sleep or worthy cup of coffee or not argue with your friend or learn correct punctuation. Most people say that it is about trying to influence you to a higher state, an awareness of eternity and change and the way life is so much bigger than you or I.

Now, I'm an emotional person but I'm not too into the golden glow of movies or the mob psychology of happy-holiday-ing it with material culture until I'm sick of the cloying stench of commercialism. Whatever it is has to . . . fit. I can't explain it. I often try to encourage emotions I think are good and discourage the ones I find unhelpful. I do believe in a moral code, so I discipline myself to it; it is an odd kind of freedom to those who aren't used to it. This is harder than it seems, but when I do feel something exactly on the beat it is like a sudden synchronisation of my heart with that overarching pattern we're all a part of; for just a little while (and for a long time in my memory) I can feel like my heart knows what it is about.

At Christmas, especially, I want to experience emotions appropriate to the season. Sometimes it takes a while to muster or has a bumpy start but there is usually a point in December where I am momentarily uplifted by an act of grace not my own, and the glow of that one moment is a sustaining one.