On a scale of Santa to Scrooge, I’d say I feel about as Christmassy as the Grinch. In light of this, finding myself suddenly surrounded by tinsel, baubles and bootleg versions of ‘All I Want for Christmas is you’ has not been pleasant. When all I want to do is buy biscuits at 10.30pm on a Saturday night, the last thing I need is to be reminded of Jesus’ birth, a man infinitely more successful than I can ever hope to be.

But before Christmas there comes Bridgemas. Imagine your family festivities at home, but with more crying (or possibly less crying, I don’t know how dramatic your yuletides normally are). Whether it’s workload-induced weeping or prompted by the fact that someone has managed to somehow simultaneously under- and overcook the turkey in their student oven, it’s certainly not my personal highlight of the year.

But this year, Bridgemas passed me by at such a speed I barely noticed. How on earth was I supposed to prepare for Christmas when I still have decorations leftover from Halloween? This may be because I don’t really take part in any traditional Bridgemas festivities – for starters I hate Secret Santa.

The thought of spending hours trawling through Paperchase only to find your present in the bin three days later brings me out in hives. I would know, I’ve had them before. I barely know what I want most of the time and now I have to buy something for someone else? And then sit there, trying not to react as they open the gift up in front of me - when my pulse is actually racing as I attempt to gauge their response, analysing their facial expressions to see whether they are genuinely satisfied with the Cadbury selection box I bought them.

"Imagine your family festivities at home, but with more crying"

There are other ways in which I have noticed that Christmas is coming. For example, I have bought my annual dose of vitamin D tablets which is always a sure sign that 25 December is just around the corner. Looking forward to the next few months of Seasonal Affective Disorder – a.k.a. SAD – that never fails to fit right in with all holiday cheer.

But I guess the real reason that I don’t care that much about Bridgemas is because I like to spend the festive season with my family, sat at home, complaining about who ate all the nice Quality Streets.

When I think of Christmas I think of happy bickering with my mum about cleaning up wrapping paper or whether or not I am old enough to decide how many sprouts I have to consume before I get ice cream. Yet in our Cambridge version, none of these things happen, mainly because it would frankly be odd for my friends to tell me how many parsnips to eat. So I’m sorry Bridgemas, you haven’t convinced me yet.