I lay in bed and vowed I would not sleep.

I thought of the endless Christmas songs played on the wireless by Auntie Peggy and Uncle Bob: ‘Away in a Manger’, ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’, ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’, ‘Jingle Bells’. I remembered the sweating Santa Claus with the cotton-wool beard and torn trousers under his scarlet robe in the Magic Cave. I thought of Nipper and Nimble and the fairies in cheese-cloth tutus in the Pageant; of Carols by Candlelight, where I watched the couples kissing by the lake and got lost in the park.

I recalled the sixpences I helped Nan to sterilize; the currants and raisins and angelica, candied peel and preserved ginger she carried from the shop; the cake she let me stir, rich with treacle, figs, and twelve eggs; the plum pudding, boiled for eight hours in the damp cloth sprinkled with flour. I tried to count the jars of conserves and jellies and jams. My eyes drooped, as I remembered cauliflower piccalilli and melon chutney; ripe tomato relish and pickled onions. The last thing I saw before I slept was the empty mouth of the pillow-case that dangled above the small tent my feet made in the bed.

The pillow-case was there when I awoke — but it was fat.

I seized it greedily, and the bed wallowed in strange objects. Sugared fish flickered in the sheets, flower-scented cachous starred my pillow, ju-jubes quivered, plaited liquorice twined. A Christmas stocking of raspberry mesh was a cage for a celluloid kewpie doll, a whistle that curled and tickled my nose, a peppermint walking-stick, a mouse with a string tail. There were three picture books and a monkey with a spotted waistcoat, a globe that filled with snow when I shook it.

The sun crept like a thief towards my booty. I pounced upon my mother and kicked her awake.

There were still more marvels to come.

The dining-room trembled with crêpe paper and tinsel, gold foil and cellophane. A spruce bough lolled in the fireplace, angel’s hair floated from the curtain-rod; there was plastic holly in the lucky heather vases.

The oval table, transformed by the damask cloth, mirrored the rainbow streamers in the glitters and gleams of the best cutlery, the cut-glass cake-stand, the harvest festival dinner-set. We sat about it, sweltering in our Sunday clothes; at last Nan swept in red-faced in her pearls to release us from awful anticipation. And the great turkey with its glazed toffee hump became small and fell in pale slices onto our plates, and there were potatoes and parsnips and mint sauce and peas and a river of tomato gravy.

We ate it all, and there was Woodroofe’s Lemonade and Schweppes’ Lime Juice, a pudding with sixpences that remained elusive, a cake with icing-sugar and coconut and a holly sprig and a paper frill, cups of tea. We stumbled away: to lavatory, bathroom, bedroom. We banished the sun with drawn blinds and curtains; slept in our petticoats.