We need to remember that Christmas is the season for giving

LAST weekend, I came back on the train from Wexford, laden with my mother’s Christmas pudding.

It is a great mass of booze-soaked fruit, butter, brown sugar and breadcrumbs. The unmistakable taste is the direct descendant of my Granny Howlin’s puddings.

She made almost a dozen every year in billy cans, giving them to family in England, and as presents to neighbours. Christmas is here. In churches around the world this morning the antiphon proclaims ‘Today you will know the Lord is coming, and in the morning you will see His Glory’.