The Christmassy feeling: Middle class problems

I have forced myself through The Messiah on Radio 3, and again on BBC4. Nothing doing.

Jeremy Corbyn's first Christmas card as Labour leader, which features a photo of a snow-covered bicycle (PA)

'Are you feeling Christmassy yet?“ my other half whispers across the bedclothes, unaware that in the pitch-black I am lying wide-eyed – and have been for the past three nights – desperately trying to invoke the fuzzy festive spirit.

It's a familiar question, one I remember from the bedroom I shared with my brother, and the furtive after-hours conferences over presents that intensified as the Big Day edged closer. Then, it was rhetorical; these days it's an inadvertent accusation of spiritual constipation.

Ever since the starting gun on the Christmassy feeling sounded on 1 December, I have tried everything. I have glutted myself with mince pies – and not just the cheap, cloying ones, either; I've thrown my lot in with Heston and his spiced, shortcrust beauties, dry-smoked over pine needles and injected with liquid nostalgia. I've bought and decorated a tree (from a Christmas “forest”, harvested on a nine-year cycle). I have walked behind a real donkey on a carol-singing walk to our local church. I have forced myself through The Messiah on Radio 3, and again on BBC4. Nothing doing.

Some time during the night, my daughter cries out in her sleep, and I creep into her room to check on her.

Through a crack in her curtains I can see moonlight glinting off the frosted rooftops and next-door's fairy lights reflected in the window. A stuffed Santa, still somehow in her grip, dangles his legs out of the side of my daughter's cot. She lets out a sigh: and so, finally, do I.