Happy Christmas

A very Happy Christmas to all my readers. At the time of writing it is not clear whether it will be a white one but the forecasters seem to think that this is a good possibility.

The idea of a White Christmas is set deep in the British psyche and probably stems from the 'little ice-age' that Britain went through between 1550 and 1850 when winters were especially cold (frost fairs on the River Thames were held as late as 1814). And the image of snow at Christmas has been perpetuated by authors like Dickens with A Christmas Carol and the Pickwick Papers.

If it does not snow you could always fall back on a popular song. With over 50 million sales world-wide 'White Christmas' by Irving Berlin is, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the world's most prolific single.

Legend has it that he wrote it in 1940 by the pool at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona — 'Grab your pen and take down this song. I just wrote the best song I've ever written — heck, I just wrote the best song that anybody's ever written!'

I hope that like my young daughters you are looking forward to Father Christmas this year. The Stride family will be leaving him a drink and a mince-pie by the fire, plus carrots for the reindeer. I told my four-year-old that I had seen Father Christmas the other day, soaring high above the rooftops, checking the chimneys of the homes where the children live.

I might of course have been wrong I told her — he was travelling so very fast — but she reassured me that I was not mistaken . . . for she had seen him too.