For many of us, I suspect, it gets harder each year to capture the mood of Christmas. About the only thing that still warms us are memories: memories of younger, more naïve days when lights and carols, Christmas trees and gifts still excited us. But we are adult now and so too, it seems, is our world. Any joy of anticipation of Christmas is blunted by many things, not least by the commercialism that, like almost everything else in life, is characterised by excess. By late October we are affronted by Christmas decorations, Santa Claus is around for all of November and most of December, and we are force-fed a series of Christmas parties which exhaust us long before December 25.