Christmas comes early

Every year in early December me, my siblings and our families gather at my mum's house, along with my 101 year old granny, for an early Christmas party. This way we can all see each other, exchange gifts, pull crackers, eat too much and have Christmas together - even though we spend Christmas Day apart.

The day always ends with the traditional game of pass the parcel (or parcel-the-parcel as its known to us) the most frenetic, chaotic and, frankly, violent party game ever invented. The parcel is the size of a small horse. Each layer hides a small gift for one of the children. The gift is always for a specific child. My mum can never remember which order she parcelled up the parcel, the ancient CD player never, ever works, and rather than passing the parcel gently around in a circle, it is LOBBED, with SPEED AND FORCE, in a dice-with-death variation of the game, involving dummies, bluffs and double bluffs.

I always win, 'because it's nearly my birthday' and it saves arguments amongst the children.

These peculiarities, rhythms and traditions unique to each family are lovely and important. The games, conversations and parts we play are important. This is what we'll remember.

My Granny was too frail to join in parcel-the-parcel this year, but up until last year she was a demon parcel-lobber. And she's still with-it. Even if she did keep calling Jamie 'Colin'.