IT’s been a strange few years since I last sat down to write a Christmas column in the Chronicle.

A lot has happened and a lot has stayed exactly the same - we had the old familiar argument about the size of the Christmas tree and as always the housemate was right and I did chose one that was far too big for the room.

On the plus side I have discovered - thanks to my sister - that working from home allows you the luxury of an occassional Bailey’s coffee in the afternoon, which does certainly bring a festive warmth to the cockles of your heart!

It also takes me back to my very early days of working at the Chronicle at our old Cross Street office, a building which even Scrooge would have deemed ‘a bit chilly’ but which was as warm and welcoming a place as I have ever known.

As busy as it was we looked forward to the Christmas season for one thing and one thing only - the bottles of sherry and boxes of mince pies which contacts and readers delivered to the office door on an almost daily basis.

I don’t know what the link between reporters and sherry was, but it was a welcome one and we all looked forward to our morning coffee, accompanied by a very civilised tot of Bristol Cream.

It’s a taste and a smell, which even now even three decades on, transports me back to that freezing room and the colleagues, who became friends and set me on a career path I was to relish.

It’s strange how that happens at Christmas more than any time of the year. How a whiff of spice or hint of pine in the air suddenly whips you back to a time you thought you’d forgotten and to visions of people you thought you’d stopped missing.

Perhaps it’s this more than anything which makes Christmas at once the happiest and the saddest time of the year.

Like so many families over the past few years, mine has been touched by loss and Christmas Day will not have its usual joy knowing that there is a very empty seat at the table.

But like so many other families, we will get through the day and there will be laughter among the sadness because as writer Michael Bassey Johnson so eloquently puts it at Christmas there will be death and there will be birth.

“ People are entering, others are exiting. The cry of a baby, the mourning of others. When others cry, the other are laughing and making merry. The world is mingled with sadness, joy, happiness, anger, wealth and poverty..”

For many, this Christmas will be tough for a whole host of different reasons, but it will also be a time when we look forward from the darkness of midwinter, to lighter nights, to longer, warmer days and to happier times because Christmas is a time of new starts and of hopes that things will get better and we can begin to make new memories to be triggered in the years to come.

I hope you all have the happiest possible Christmas and that the New Year will be a better one for us all.

On a personal note thank you to all those who have taken the time to write to me to welcome me back to Abergavenny after my few years away. It’s been lovely over the past few months to meet old friends and make some new ones.

I look forward to the New Year and to re-opening our Nevill Street office - which is not a hint to anyone that sherry could still be on the Chronicle menu!

So, from all of us at The Chron to all of you - A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year!