It’s the early afternoon of Christmas Eve sometime in the late 1960s, and the adolescent Ian McMillan, with his voice newly broken (well, more or less) and a few scribblings of hair on his chin and neck, is listening to music on the radio.

The adolescent Ian, seeing himself as kind of bohemian rebel, says that he despises routine but as his older brother John points out, Ian always likes to watch the wrestling at the same time every Saturday afternoon. This makes Ian sulk, makes his voice rise and fall a few octaves, makes his face blush startlingly red.

Ian’s dad is washing up the dinner pots, because it’s part of his routine, and he’s wearing a tartan pinny and he’s singing. This causes teenage Ian to become more embarrassed than anybody has become in the long history of embarrassment, right back to when Adam in the Garden of Eden discovered that he’d got nowt on. Not only is Ian’s dad washing up, not only is he wearing a tartan pinny, but he’s singing! How uncool is that, to use a phrase that Ian might have used at this time without the slightest hint of any irony. Ian’s dad is singing his favourite Christmas carol, Silent Night. It’s a song he sang on those Christmas Eves in the Second World War when he was on his ship in a storm in the South China seas or mid-Atlantic. It’s a song that didn’t seem sentimental to him then; if he could have articulated his feelings with precision he would have said that the song reminded him of some kind of vision of home, of the deep sadness of being away from loved ones at Christmas, and of the hope of some kind of reunion somewhere down the line.

Ian’s dad is a man who loves to sing sad songs and the odd thing is that although Teenage Ian finds this squirmingly inappropriate in the late 1960’s, if we can fast forward fifty years to 2022 then we’ll find that Ian is singing as he washes up. It’s his routine.

In fact, look; there he is. He’s standing in a kitchen that’s just across the road from where he lived all those years ago. He’s washing up and he’s wearing a pinny. It’s not a tartan pinny unless the great artist Mondrian designed tartans. He’s not a teenager any longer, of course. He’s 66 years old and his hair is as white as the snow that will no doubt be falling because it’s Christmas Eve. Listen: he’s singing. He’s singing in a voice that isn’t as sweet as his dad’s but he’s singing.

And here’s a thing: he’s not singing progressive rock. He’s not playing air guitar and he’s not using the spoon he’s just dried as a microphone so that he can warble something by King Crimson or Deep Purple. No, he’s singing Silent Night, because it makes him think of his dad.

That’s one of the things that Christmas is about, isn’t it? Continuity. Continuity of family and continuity of love. And continuity of singing as you wash up just like your dad used to.

All is calm. All is bright. Merry Christmas, everybody.

Christmas is about continuity of family and love - Ian McMillan