My Christmas Day SARA BAUME

My Christmas is completely untypical. My boyfriend and I are not Catholic, and neither are we fond of consumerism. What I miss about Christmas is the sense of ceremony. I like the idea that there are all these ancient stories and we still make little figurines to mark that occasion. I just don’t like Catholicism and the Catholic Church. We have a little tree in a pot that we call Trevor and he gets to come inside for three days, so we can dress him up in lights. We’ve started going for picnics. We were like, “What’s the most ridiculous thing we can do for Christmas?” So we go for a freezing picnic somewhere with a wicker basket and a rug. We don’t have any kids so we buy things for the dogs. We’ll give one 20 tennis balls all at once and see what he does.

Sara Baume is an award-winning Irish novelist who this year published her second novel, A Line Made By Walking.