There could only be one choice for the final door of the advent calendar — Jesus!

This is Jesus’s tenth Christmas, but he is still as sprightly and daft as when he first moved in with us. For the first few years of his life, we lived in several different places, and he accepted each move, each unfamiliar home, with quiet equanimity. When we finally settled in our upper-storey locale five years ago, he devised a particularly cunning method of entering and exiting — leaping out of or into the bathroom window by means of the adjacent plum tree. This tree is his favourite place to be at all times of the year. It is his refuge from the annoyances of neighborhood cats and squirrels, the predations of the occasional fox, or me and my camera. You will note that his default expression is one of slight confusion — just one of the many characteristics that makes him a particularly endearing feline companion. He looks forward to the festive season as it means a break from his usual Spartan diet of spacefood — if he’s good, he might even get some guinea fowl tomorrow.

Well, Jesus’s birthday is now upon us and, wherever you are in the world and whatever you are doing, he, Tom, and I wish all of you the very best for the festive season and new year!