Striving to create new traditions atChristmas time

There suddenly – well since early November – appears to be entire television channels devoted to tear-jerking festive tales instead of gut-wrenching true movies about murder.

Parking spaces in normally empty car parks are now full.

And Grangemouth’s Portal Road is lit up like midnight in Las Vegas.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

The Trimble family tries to observe all the usual Yuletide traditions – the tree will go up somewhere around December 12 and come down when we can find the motivation to dismantle it and stick it back in the loft.

Wee Cheeky follows the old custom of opening his advent calender every day with an almost religious fervour and we at least have a short discussion about taking the time to watch the Queen’s speech.

Over the last few years we’ve tried to create our own Christmas routines – you can’t really call them traditions until you’ve been doing them for a couple of centuries – that we must follow come hell or high water.

The longest-established of these Trimbo Chrimbo customs is the chocolate lunch we enjoy at a big posh department store in our nation’s capital after my last pay day of the year.

It’s become such an important fixture in our lives I only grumble about the crowds, queues and the prices under my breath and do not make my innate negativity public any more.

This year we could be adding another new routine by going to see an open air screening of the film Elf in Perth city centre.

Call me old Uncle Ebenezer, but I can already sense this particular event may not have the staying power of our chocolate lunch pilgrimage.