Nobody likes change.
Only joking. I like change. It’s one of the reasons I love London. (It’s also one of the reasons I left London). But when it comes to Christmas, change is very, very bad.
That’s probably why we neglected to plan where we would spend the day itself: the idea of this beloved annual tradition being so utterly bereft of all the identical customs, clichés and cracker jokes was too traumatic. Add in the lack of proper build-up and I could just pretend it wasn’t happening.
Then suddenly there was less than a fortnight to go, our parents were asking “where are you spending Christmas?” and we thought – crap, where are we spending Christmas? Probably ought to get that sorted.