Every year – earlier every year – I take the baby Jesus from his Tesco bag and put him with his mortal parents in his wooden painted barn, a couple of grinning angels on the roof. The family is framed by improbably attractive livestock, kings and shepherds. It’s part of the tradition, along with the liberty to binge on pork wrapped in more pork, and chocolate orange. I do not believe that the son of God was born 2021 years ago, conceived by celestial intervention, but I don’t understand why I can’t leave the unlikely maternity ward in the cupboard this December, or any other.
