My sister and I were discussing recently whether it was possible to separate people into different seasons. If this were the case, she would be a summer person and I would be a winter person. In my honest opinion, there is nothing better than coming in from a winter’s walk in the freezing cold, sitting in front of a roaring fire, hot chocolate in hand and wrapped up in a blanket.

This time of year is rather special; it has come around so quickly, but today is the start of Advent.

You can smell the mulled wine spices floating through the streets, you are having to wake up five minutes earlier each day to scrape the crystallised frost from your windscreen and the garish Christmas lights are being switched on left, right and centre.

If you haven’t seen it already, it is only a matter of time until the Coca-Cola advert hits your screens, and we all know what that means.

I am sorry (well not that sorry!) to say it, but Christmas is upon us.

I have decided that this year will be a homemade Christmas. It all started when I chose to take up knitting; my lovely next-door neighbour Diana sat with me and, without getting at all frustrated, somehow managed to show me how to knit. I am hoping to expand my repertoire from knit to purl, and maybe even the fancy ones before Christmas comes along.

Every medical meeting that I have been to of late, Mum has piped up with “and she’s even started knitting”; it took me a while to appreciate the significance of what she was actually saying. What she was trying to convey was that even though I have been struggling to cope with having relapses and getting on top of how my brain injury will play a role in my life, I have somehow been able to pick up a new skill, showing how perhaps I am actually still able to enhance my knowledge, which I had assumed was an impossibility.

I asked my other sister what memories she had of this time of year, and for her it is the setting up the nativity scene. The most exciting part was placing Jesus in the manger, a responsibility that I liked to take on myself as the eldest (and most important) child.

Personally, it always makes me think back to our youth, when everyone else would come into school, lips covered in chocolate, boasting about the delicious treats they had found behind their advent calendar door that morning. By contrast, my siblings and I would be revealing one of Mary’s eyes or Joseph’s feet each day to create a quintessential Catholic Christmas scene, a tradition that carried on throughout our childhood. At the time I was probably envious of my schoolmates’ daily chocolates but, looking back, I am truly thankful to my Granne for taking the time to send them to us each and every year.

Maybe this year I will deviate from tradition and treat myself to an advent calendar filled with chocolate goodies, but maybe not, perhaps tradition is tradition for a reason.