Christmas cheers

H.G. Wells once famously charged that Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton had “surrounded Catholicism with a kind of boozy halo”. He doubtless had in mind, in the case of Belloc, at least, the best known of his praises of wine in the famous quatrain:

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so,
Benedicamus Domino!