Last week started in a traditional Christmas vein with second son’s school Christmas play.

He had the role of King number one, an apparently slightly grumpy and wooden sort of guy with a predisposition for wearing oversized dressing downs and Christmas cracker style paper crowns.

His star moment came as he launched a gold box at the plastic baby Jesus while mumbling the line he had been given two weeks to learn: “I bring you gold.”

Being a typical primary school nativity, most of the speaking was drowned out by the younger kids coughing and spluttering, but it was lovely and the king that brought the gold has always secretly been my favourite.

By the end of the week, we found ourselves at eldest son’s carol service.

Being new parents to the school, we turned up en masse and found ourselves in the front row, forgetting that the wriggling and fidgeting of youngest son would be on full display to the entire church during a service so formal, it made carols from Westminster Abbey look like a school disco.

The ultimate humiliation came somewhere between the third lesson and Whilst Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night, as a distinctive smell from youngest son filled the air, much to his amusement.

Partly due to the direct questioning of the lady in the row behind, it was with regret that I admitted that it was indeed “eau de six-year-old” and not a dodgy lot of incense.

Playing the game of who can stand up first and sit down last with second son, provided some light relief but after nearly two hours of carols and readings, we realised that we’re probably more suited to school nativities than impressive choral displays at this moment in time.

By the time we reached the weekend, Christmas festivities were hotting up and the Christmas tree was installed.

Everyone has their own traditions surrounding this.

In our house, it follows a usual path: we start off with an argument about the size of the tree we need, usually resulting in a tree at least one third too big for the available space.

This is followed by another argument about why we need to spend treble figures on it.

By the time we get home, we've lost any feelings of goodwill... and that’s before we start the ritual of trying to get the damn thing to stand straight in its container.

The next stage is getting the decorations out of the loft and sitting on my hands while three eager boys with zero sense of interior design style throw anything and everything at the only parts of the tree they can reach.

After discreet rearrangement, while they are out of sight, we eventually end up with a lopsided tree with a degree of sophistication.

Tinsel is banned and anything with a propensity to drop glitter.

By Saturday evening, the Christmas songs were playing, the prosecco was open and we were doing a pretty good impression of a happy family.

That was, right up until the part where I managed to fall and break my wrist.

Never a great injury to sustain as a dentist and especially with a house full of guests to entertain over Christmas.

Thankfully, it’s the left one, and so I spent the rest of the weekend trying to explain how to wrap up presents to an 11-year-old and watching my husband write Christmas cards while I made lists with my available hand – a new experience for us all. Never mind, I’m sure everyone will muck in and you’re never short of alcohol to numb the pain at this time of year.

Maybe it’s time we started some new Christmas traditions.

Never mind school plays and Christmas trees, I’ll be trying to convince everyone that Turkey pizza is the way forward this year!

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