You can see how the rot set in. New Year’s Day is the natural time for resolutions, a chance to give ourselves a fresh start, a reset, a blank page in life’s new diary. The trouble is, though, that resolutions nowadays so often revolve round eating less, eating more healthily, exercising more, giving things up, and losing weight. And so, when you have sufficient numbers engaging in “New Year, New You” projects, you end up with communal expressions of abstinence, viz, Dry January and Veganuary. In combination, it’s practically Albigensian.

The vilest aspect of these things is that 1 January falls right in the middle of the Twelve Days of Christmas. So, precisely at the time we should be carrying on with Christ’s party season, right up to the Epiphany and sloping off only gradually until Candlemas, people are giving up on entertainment, even without the excuse of Covid. Christians are quite often countercultural, but for once, this involves eating and drinking more than our neighbours, and having a good time, always supposing we’re allowed to. It’s a challenge, of course, when we’re being exhorted to eat plant-based food and drink smoothies, but as I maintain every year, we must somehow find the strength to eschew the diets and abstinence. It’s a bit like the cultural clash between the Roman and Celtic calendar that preceded the Synod of Whitby, when the king and his entourage were celebrating Easter while his queen and her courtiers were still doing Lent. Except in our case, we’re carrying on the celebrations, not the abstinence.