Humans have had midwinter festivals since time immemorial, but we’ve landed up with Christmas at the wrong time, writes Rebecca McQuillan

For our wellbeing, for tradition and for the sake of Christmas card illustrators everywhere, we should shift Christmas.

One week to go. After hurtling through a blustery Advent, we’re almost at Christmas.

If Christmas were a person she’d be a big camp aunty in glitterball earrings and a towering hair-do. We need her warm embrace during winter. But every year, bless her, she gets it a bit wrong by turning up far too early.

Every eight-year-old will tell you that Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Jesus, which of course it is. But it’s also about having a great big party at the most dismal time of year. If we weren’t celebrating the birth of Jesus, we’d still be having a big winter festival of light because we really do need it.

Winter festivals famously have more ancient roots than nativity celebrations, going back millennia. In the cold, dark, lean depths of winter, our ancestors got together and celebrated enduring life by decorating their homes with holly and ivy. The celebration of new life in the nativity echoes these more ancient customs.

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And they feasted. Even neolithic people in Britain were having surprisingly epic meat-based winter shindigs, archaeologists have discovered. Unable to continue feeding all their livestock, some animals would be slaughtered and there would be a brief period of plenty – plenty of food, plenty of ale, plenty of fire, plenty of storytelling and plenty of mischief and debauchery.

The office Christmas party, turkey dinner, Christmas cocktails, tipsy........

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