My Christmas in a glass - a toast to happiness past, present and future

Ah, tis the time of year when we all make merry, imbibing with mirth and merriment for the holidays ahead. My folks loved Christmas and imbued our home with a sense of wonder. There were strict adherences, such as the tree going up in the last few days before Christmas so the needles of the fir were fresh and still scented. Each day another net of oranges and clementines was added to bowls and baskets already brimming with fruit, and Mum would be found in the kitchen rolling pastry for pies or icing a cake.

- BY JEREMY LEE

And golly it was cold. Being brought up on the east coast of Scotland, just outside Dundee but still within sight of the great estuary of the river Tay as it flows out to the North Sea, we were inured to the cold, and Dad found as much use as he did humour in leaving wine to chill outside the kitchen door. The sight of him pulling a gold-foiled neck from a frozen bucket full of bottles of wine became something of a tradition; he wrapped up warm and dashed outside on Christmas morning to bring in a bottle left chilling through the night of a freezing cold Christmas Eve. There was never room to host a bottle of fizz inside, the fridge being packed to the gunwales with a great turkey at its centre.

As errant teenagers, it was deemed appropriate for us to have a drink, too. Instead of champagne which, it was true, we may not have appreciated, a sparkling wine would appear, a cremant from the Loire or from Burgundy. I enjoy them still, very much. The wine was poured on to freshly squeezed orange juice and we toasted the day with Buck's Fizz, the drink “de nos jours” back then — once served at many a gathering, but rarely seen now.