I’m sat on a spindly-legged chair in a yoga studio turned concert hall for the evening. A Christmas tree is standing in the corner, covered in nothing but soft white fairy lights, there are jars with sprigs of pine on the tables. I have a mug of tea in my hands, bigger than my face and am warming cold December-fingers on Turkish apple and cinnamon.

Christmas concerts are like being invited into someone else’s Christmas; into the music they turn up on the radio during ginger bread house construction, the songs they sing while toasting marshmallows in the kitchen fireplace of their family home.

You can hear the care and the love that people weave into their Christmas shows. No song is a coincidence, the set is list curated with northern stars and candle light. You can feel the Christmas pyjamas and woolen jumpers in the air on more quiet, cosy songs, and the wind against your cheek as you rush down a snowy hill, rolling, tumbling, on songs that embody more fun.

I’m not sure what songs I’d put on the set list of my own Christmas concert. There are too many songs to choose from, unless you want to keep the audience seated from today and right up until Christmas morning.

I wouldn’t know how to show someone else the smell of my parents’ house during Christmas, how to convey the sounds of my family home in celebration, of the quiet excitement, the chatter and the peace of Christmas eve in our house hold. How do you make people feel the weight of that one knitted blanket that accompanies every Christmas film, or the chess square cookies my mum always bakes?

The good thing though, is that most likely, everyone else have got that too. They’ve got their own songs, their own smells, their own tastes which makes Christmas Christmas, and come to think of it, that’s the whole point, isn’t it?

So I think for now, I’ll hold onto my mug and sit back on my spindly-legged chair, and stay seated in someone else’s Christmas for just a little longer. I’ll listen to the Christmas the musicians on the stage wants to convey, and even though it’s not my Christmas, it’s a very beautiful celebration, indeed. I’m so excited to go home to my own, to travel towards Christmas and my family which I haven’t seen for a while. To travel to where I know what Christmas sounds and smells like, and where I know exactly how the New Year will be rung in.

I’ll go back to where the feeling is bottled in those jars we bring out every year. I’ll be home for Christmas.

-Andrea