'Santa has a list of good and bad children. The good children will get lots of presents and so, it turns out, will be the bad children. In fact, only ones who won’t get very much are the poor children- that’s because Santa judges a child’s goodness based largely on parental income.’

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'Today, some people choose to turn the outside of their homes into a giant Advent Crown. A jolly house covered in electric lights maybe expensive and use a lot of power, but it’s the perfect way to cheer up a world worried about climate change and dwindling recourse.'

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'Of course, in Queen Victorian times, only the super rich had fancy decorations. Ordinary, poor people had to celebrate Christmas by coughing and counting their surviving offspring.'

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'Although it was scheduled to be over by Christmas, the war with Germany lasted four years. Mechanised conflict is the most horrifying legacy of the 20th century, as anyone who’s seen Robot Wars will agree. But at Christmas 1914, there was a brief ceasefire. The fighting stopped. Soldiers got out of their holes and joined together in a place called No Man’s Land showing that, even at moments of peace, men will still divide into two sides and try to beat one another. The Great War claimed over 17 million lives, making it the worst incident of football-related violence of all time.'

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'TV’s becoming a thing of the olden past, like sundials or ploughs, because today, everyone has their own little screen, so they can ignore their immediate surroundings on an individual basis instead of as part of a collective effort. We’ve often told to feel sorry for those who are alone at Christmas, but these days that’s all of us and it’s brilliant.'

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Hear hear.