Taking down the Christmas decorations tonight, wrapping the stars and angels, I’m repacking our family memory box. The plain coloured glass baubles, with their worn patches and wobbly tops, hung on my parents’ tree: even their tissue paper, yellowed and increasingly frail, found its way to the London suburbs from deepest Cornwall. There are fewer crystal icicles than there were before my daughter and her best friend sledged down the stairs on their stomachs and took the tree with them – a terrifying crash, followed by absolute silence and two pairs of horrified eyes looking at the wreckage. I was just grateful that there were no broken bones. The little nativity scene on the hall window-sill came home with us from a wonderful Spanish holiday with a family who have been friends since before any of our children were born. The unlikely painted glass hippie camper van came from Woodstock: a holiday of highs and lows, before our son’s Aspergers diagnosis. The tiny felt mouse in a walnut shell came from a local fete, and has survived longer than much grander ornaments. Other individual bits and pieces come with memories of galleries, museums and heritage sites across the UK, from family visits and work-related trips.

And then there are the general house decorations: the red tape cut to length to wind around the stair rails and hold the non-breakable bells and baubles; the tinsel-wrapped wreath which is just the right size to tie to the door knocker; the bits and pieces from crackers and table decorations that sit on the mantelpieces and the rather roughly modelled golden angel which ‘flies’ from the top banisters above the hallway. And, of course, there are the papier mache reindeer (also gold – there’s a theme emerging) whose antlers need more and more sellotape every year, and which stand on top of the bathroom boiler cupboard when not called upon to guard the Christmas tree.

There are other elements to the traditional packing up process: the discovery of a bag of small gifts, for stockings or the tree, bought well in advance and completely lost until just a little too late. The crackers which we never do remember to put out when the little ones of the extended family arrive. And the final dismantling of the impossible puzzle with which we all claim to have helped, but which in practice has been almost entirely the work of our daughter.

Writers for glossy magazine would undoubtedly be horrified by the lack of a single colour scheme and the battered edges. I couldn’t be happier with our Christmas-as-history.