One of my childhood Christmas Day rituals was morning Mass, clad in whatever awful anorak or jumper Santa had left under the tree. Each time the church door would creak open, I’d peep over my shoulders during a chorus of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” to see which of my friends had just come in, trussed up in their new togs, and evaluate at a glance how terrible (or cool) they were. There was one family – who had better remain nameless – who every year would arrive with a matching set of vibrant hand-knitted hats, scarves or gloves, all provided by a loving but colour-blind grandma.The picture flashed vividly across my memory recently as I was sitting cosily one wintry Sunday in the back row of our little church of St Henry Walpole on the north Norfolk coast.