GET STOCKINGS OUT is the job of the day for Monday, although whether that is a two-minute task or a two-hour one depends on how organised your house is. Don’t tell anyone, but I think we might skip stockings this year, because we’re trying to reduce the amount of unnecessary Stuff we have and it’s quite hard to fill a stocking with necessary Stuff. For more years of my life than I’m willing to own up to, though, I found opening the Christmas stocking the most thrilling part of the whole day, and I will still insist on chocolate coins and a satsuma before breakfast on Christmas Day, stocking or no stocking.

Also my stocking is really small, because it’s one that I think my paternal grandma made for me when I was tiny, and I don’t want anyone to think that the size of my stocking should be a limit on the size of what Santa brings me.

Luckily some people are far more selfless – for example, the little boy in this delight of a song, put out in the 1950s by US children’s record label Cricket, on vinyl that crackles like a log fire. Enjoy!