I don’t like to make Christmas into a big, all-consuming event, and I only celebrate it as a non-religious family-oriented gift-giving festival, but I am (rather surprisingly) feeling very festive this year! A trip into London last weekend helped this along, I am sure. I despise shopping centres with piped-in Christmas hits — Slade, Wizzard, and Wham! have a lot to answer for — but wandering around lots of individual shops, looking at gorgeous window displays in the large department stores, and visiting special Christmas events is a real pleasure.

First stop was the Winter Wonderland event in Hyde Park, which consisted of a small German market, various fairground rides, and ice skating. The market was pretty, but not especially inspiring, and by far the best thing there was the food. There was also mulled wine (which really took the edge off what was a freezing morning) and delicious sausage.

More shopping ensued, as did a necessary stop for coffee (it really was bitingly cold, sub-zero with the wind chill factor, and I was very glad I’d worn a scarf, hat and gloves). Covent Garden is always a favourite haunt of mine, and this year their event is called Christmas Deluxe. It was a little early for the food market to be properly open but I was still full from my sausage — and the queues would have been epic, anyway, judging from the number of people already there! The decorations in the piazza were beautiful, probably even more so at night.

And then, quite by chance, we stumbled across a sea of Santa Clauses in Leicester Square.

I did a little checking when I got home, and this is apparently a big pub crawl, possibly called “Santacon”. Brilliant.