Christmas Eve – which is of course today – might not have seemed a bundle of fun in the White House as occupied by Franklin D. Roosevelt. And, to digress, I might observe that one of the many things I have learned during 2015 is that his name is properly pronounced “rose” and not “roose”.

The programme note by John Good for the New Theatre’s wonderful production of Annie (reviewed in Weekend) tells us that the president, who plays a part in the story, planned special festive entertainment for the household.

“On Christmas Eve, surrounded by his grandchildren, FDR would read from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, acting out the parts of Scrooge and Tiny Tim [others like Bob Cratchit and the ghosts could presumably go hang].”

This suggests to me something of the irksome atmosphere Evelyn Waugh experienced on a first festive visit in 1931 to Pixton, home to his fiancée Laura.

Artemis Cooper, the editor of Waugh’s letters to her grandmother, Lady Diana Cooper, reports: “There was too much of what Waugh called ‘family fun’.” (Folk had a lot to endure in the days before telly!) Roosevelt, returning to my theme, would go on to celebrate Christ’s nativity in his special way.

At Christmas dinner, reports John Good, the family would gather around the table where FDR carved paper-thin slices of turkey. Proud of his expertise with the knife he would boast: “You can almost read through it.”

Had I been present, with that “almost” transformed to “actually”, the pages observed through my turkey slice might have come from the aforementioned A Christmas Carol. I love its closing moments when the reformed Scrooge tells his clerk Cratchit: “I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family [Dickens’s flair for the vernacular appears to have deserted him here], and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of Smoking Bishop.”

Smoking Bishop! Now there’s a drink! Copious draughts have enlightened many occasions, festive and otherwise, since I became acquainted with it 30-odd years ago.

Its recipe came to me through an excellent book, Drinking With Dickens, written by the author’s last surviving great-grandson, Cedric Dickens. I bought it when Cedric’s son John was co-owner of Brotherton’s restaurant in Woodstock and held a launch party there.

Smoking Bishop calls for clove-studded oranges to be baked and then placed with spices into a boiling cauldron of Portuguese wine (fortified and not).

Before writing this, I considered pulling Drinking With Dickens from the high shelf where it resides, but concluded that such athletic activity was not entirely suitable for one already gripped with the festive spirit (by which I mean spirits).

I dare say some shoppers thought my pal David had been hitting the hooch when he accosted them in Headington last week demanding to know the way to Lapland.

“A question for Santa, surely,” said one, who guessed that what was being sought was the direction to the Iceland supermarket.

Actually, Britain does boast a Lapland in the shape of a winter wonderland theme park located in the Whitmoor Forest, in Ascot.

The supermarket Iceland has, I feel sure, been enjoying great success this Christmas owing in large part to its successful advertising featuring Peter Andre (“Mr Orange”, as The Times’ Caitlin Moran calls him).

David, having found “Lapland”, bought an excellent whole rack of lamb which we greatly enjoyed eating with him. He was less happy, though, with a beef wellington, on account of its rather nasty tasting pâté. Still laughing about Lapland earlier in the week, we were further amused to learn of the experience of another friend – she shall remain nameless – on a shopping mission.

Calling at Botley Co-op to buy a sandwich, she attempted to pay for it using counterfeit money.

Placing a cluster of pound coins into the hand of an assistant, she was surprised to be told that one of them was a gold-wrapped chocolate coin that had been passed to her, undetected, in an earlier transaction.

Happy Christmas to all.