Christmas

It took three hours for cabin fever to set in. Last Christmas, snowed in at the Oxfordshire homestead, my brother Ed and I, cooped up, cross, snappish, reverted to childhood squabbling. There’s a photo on my phone of Ed’s dog Rags standing at the kitchen door looking mournfully through the glass. We did let her out, but there are few sights so pitiable as a Chihuahua–Pomeranian trying to gambol, shivering, through four inches of snow. The first afternoon, I paced the upstairs corridor wondering how long before I went full Jack Torrance in The Shining. ‘All snow and no walk makes Laura a dull girl…’ By the third day, I

Gavin Stamp, who died just before the year’s end, will be mourned by many Spectator readers. For years, particularly in the 1980s, he was the paper’s main voice on architectural questions, notably as they affected the public space. His voice, both angry and compassionate, would be raised whenever he thought someone in authority — in church, state, local government, big business — was damaging what belonged to the people. He was very important at changing official attitudes imbued with fag-end modernism. No one expounded better the conception of a building’s public purpose, so to hear him talk about, say, Lutyens’s Memorial to the Missing of the Somme at Thiepval, was

Each Boxing Day my mother would take out her pen and pad, And estimate the cost price of those Christmas gifts we’d had, From relatives and family friends. And when the sum fell short, Of the monetary value for the various gifts she’d bought, She’d write it in her ledger. Underlined in red. So, Aunty Bertha, Mrs Bridges – to my mum, they were now dead. ‘A pair of socks for twenty pence! A slinky half as dear! I’ll tell you this for nothing, son – they’re getting nowt next year. I bought that cow some Matchmakers, not just mint, but orange too And all I have is ankle socks

Christmas – the season of goodwill, turkey, tinsel and general over-indulgence. Except that is, if you work at the Guardian. With just two days to go until Christmas day, the paper has produced a late contender for most Grauniad article of the year. Writing for the paper, Saskia Sarginson shares her Christmas dilemma: can one permit traditional indulgences when ‘they seem at odds with the world we live in today’? Sarginson’s environmentally-conscious children have changed her perspective on Christmas traditions: ‘My children have no desire to hark back to something that is gone, and I see their point that traditional indulgences seem at odds with the world we live in today. I

Christmas splurge How much extra do households spend at Christmas? — £500, according to the Bank of England. Over the course of December our spending on food increases by 10%, alcoholic drinks by 20% and books 35%. — £645, according to OnePoll (2016), including £117 spent on a partner’s gift. — £796, according to YouGov (2015), including £159 on food and drink and £596 on gifts. This is an extract from Barometer, in the Christmas issue of the Spectator

Thank God for the proprieties. This magazine’s editor, Fraser Nelson, rattled a few score Anglicans today when he declared in his Radio 4 newspaper roundup at Broadcasting House (pleasingly paired with the FT’s Lionel Barber, BTW) that Meghan Markle and Prince Harry were to share a bedroom when they stay with the Queen at Sandringham over Christmas. This was on the back of a piece by Rachel Johnson, sister of, in the Mail on Sunday, deploring the fact that Meghan was to glad hand the crowds after the Christmas service, even though she’s only engaged. It was the bedroom-sharing arrangement bit that scandalised me. If the Queen, whose other job