How are we doing over there? Have you managed to make a dent on the mountain of snacks and nibbles that made your cupboard look like a post-apocalyptic food store (who knew the shops would only be closed for just one day, right?)

If you’re like most of the country, you’re probably wedged into an armchair watching The Sound of Music (which, by the way, you hate), ploughing through a tin of Quality Street you don’t need or want – because, well, it’s Christmas, dammit! – and muttering darkly about losing weight.

Over the past few weeks there’s been a lot of online chat about exactly this subject. How to rid yourself of the extra pounds that pile on while you digest the aperitif that is Christmas and await the entrée that is New Year. A time of year known by some as Twixtmas and by others as the somewhat ruder perineum. Go ahead and look that up. We’ll wait.

It occurred to me that there was a common theme to all the social media, blogs and online articles, which was the assumptions they made about what causes weight gain and what motivates us to then lose it.

Well done, you made it! To misquote John Lennon, another year over and a new one just about to begin. Now there’s just the tricky issue of Christmas to navigate and it’s plain sailing all the way into 2019, right?

Well, yes – but that’s easier said than done.

Over the last two weeks or so, I’ve seen quite a lot of stuff online about why Christmas is a terrible time of the year.

I don’t know, maybe the mood of the moment is to be fed up with life. I don’t know why that should be the case, and maybe we should blame Brexit for it, since that seems to be responsible for everything else that people perceive to be wrong in life generally these days.

I think for most people, Christmas is a wonderful time of year (though, as I said in the article I wrote this time last year, we should be careful about setting our expectations too high and constructing an ideal that the festive season will never match), but there’s no doubt that for others it can also be a something to be dreaded.

Christmas. A time for peace, joy and goodwill to all. Frosted breath plumes, comforters snake about collars, greetings and laughter fill the air. A myriad of a thousand tiny lights add sparkle to a tree beneath whose branches beautifully-wrapped gifts await new owners.

At this time of year, we’re bombarded with vision after vision of what a perfect Christmas should look like. It’s all firelit ochre tones, people laughing gaily, families coming together in a blaze of harmony, perfect presents under perfect trees, high romance and not a raised voice to be heard.

In a perfect Christmas, perfect things happen. It snows in big, fluffy flakes and everyone is tremendously happy about it. Families smile and laugh with each other in a big happy love-bubble. Boyfriends propose with diamond rings submerged in glasses of champagne. The turkey exits the oven bronzed with those little chef hat things on the end of each of its legs. Monopoly is played without a single disagreement over how much rent is owed on Mayfair.