Having his birthday in December left the novelist with a lifelong aversion to Christmas – until one surprising night in the City of Light

It was my misfortune to be born on 8 December, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The date being so close to Christmas, many aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, some girlfriends, and sometimes even my parents, seized the opportunity to save a few bob by giving me a single, dual-purpose present.

This economising wheeze did not endear me to Our Saviour, to his Immaculate Mother, or to their Special Day. It wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t fair. But what could I do?

Inevitably, I was left with what I still consider to be a healthy aversion to Christmas. I deplore it, I disdain it, and all its bells and bows; for me it is the season of ill-will.

True, it’s not all misery. I try not to let on, but I do like my glass of champers on Christmas morning, my jorum of port on Christmas night, and even my special, punitive cure –grappa with Angostura bitters – on the morning after.

All my Noels are memorable – drearily so. And nowadays it is increasingly irksome for us members of the Humbuggers Club, in that the first faint tinkle of sleigh bells is to be heard on or about Easter Tuesday. Eventually, next Christmas will be getting underway this Christmas.

Which reminds me of my much-loved late brother – unlike me, a keen Christmas-bibber, as Philip Larkin might say, years ago returning from a summer trip to Germany brimming with glee, having discovered, in depths of the

Black Forest no doubt, a village where it was Christmas all year round.

Perhaps I am misremembering, perhaps it was just a large store he stumbled on, selling nothing but Santa costumes and boxes of crackers and bolts of that special stiff, shiny, expensive wrapping paper, and a whole Schwarzwald of plastic Tannenbäume. If I am damned when

I die, I have no doubt that’s where I’ll be sent, to the shop ‘Immer Weihnachten’ on the corner of Türkei Strasse, there to writhe agonisingly amid good cheer for all eternity.

Oh, come, I hear you exclaim, surely as a child you enjoyed the season? And yes, I may have experienced a pang or two of wan satisfaction, sitting amidst the wreckage of those birthday-cum-christmas presents. Perhaps I consented to eat a mince pie. Perhaps – who knows? – I smiled. But bah, I say. Bah. And yet…

It is some 25 years ago. Christmas Eve. Lunch with our two daughters, one nine, the other still a babe in arms, in a crowded restaurant in Lyon. Much bibulous hilarity. The chef shouting, our waiter cheerfully drunk – have you ever seen a French waiter drunk? – and the fat patron ponderously flirting with every woman in the place. Afterwards, the TGV to Paris, to stay at a friend’s flat in Saint-germain.

Dublin, where we live, heaves with revellers on Christmas Eve – heaves. In Paris, to our amazement, the streets are deserted. But what shall we do, oh, what shall we do, with this wholly unexpected Christmas gift, a deserted Paris, silent, star-lit and serene?

The baby needs her sleep, and her mother is tired. But Ellen, our nine-year-old, is too

I deplore Christmas, I disdain it, and all its bells and bows; for me it is the season of ill-will

excited, and so, I confess, am I, to stay tamely indoors. Surely there will be a café open somewhere in the arrondissement?

We put on our coats and stroll up the rue Saint-benoît, and there it is: the Café de Flore. And it’s almost empty. We sit on the glassed-in terrace, along with another pair of happy nighthawks. They huddle lost in love at a tiny table, hands entwined, fondly blowing Gauloise smoke in each other’s eyes. They are both clad from head to toe in leather. Not bikers’ leather — more Saint Laurent, en mode sauvage.

Covertly we study them, fascinated. ‘I wonder,’ I say quietly, ‘if she’s wearing leather knickers, too.’ My daughter chokes on her chocolat chaud, blushes scarlet, and says, ‘Dad!’ with equal measures of deprecation and delight.

And still it was only Christmas Eve, with all of the next day, and all of next week, and all of Paris, before us.

Was I converted? I wasn’t. And yet…

Snow and April in Spain, both by John Banville, are out now (Faber, £9.99 and £8.99 respectively)