It's Christmas Day and all is quiet.

It's Christmas Day and all is quiet.

The streets and roads are as quiet as a library. There is not a soul to be seen or heard.  There is silence, peace and stillness. Cars and buses have fallen into a temporary hibernation and even the traffic lights at the top of our road seem to have taken the day off. This can only mean one thing and one thing only. It's Christmas Day and families around the world will carefully tread their way into the living room, smile pleasingly at the Christmas tree in the corner, wish they hadn't quaffed too many brandies, sherries and lagers the previous day and then slump back on their sofas with a hearty guffaw and belly laugh.

We all know that today is the one day completely devoted to rest, relaxation and detailed analysis of what the TV may have to offer us before just resigning ourselves us to the fact that Christmases of yesteryear were so different and those who miss the past will just have to get used to the present and the future. Of course Christmas will never be the same as it used to be because evolution always makes its presence felt and change is difficult.

During the 1950s everything shut for the day on Christmas Day. The shops and big department stores closed for the day, offices put up the shutters, factories declared a day of complete inactivity, street markets withdrew their services and even those quaint corner shops fixed the padlock on. The newsagents, which had been a hotbed of money and affluence, were now reduced to a whispering breeze that nobody can now hear.

For Christmas Day is that unique day of the year when nobody does anything at all and wishes that Christmas could just go away and never come back. Isn't it amazing that on the one day of the year we should look forward to, we all cross our arms in a fit of pique and frustration, pleading with the kids to keep the noise down? It's supposed to be a day of religious contemplation, looking back over the year at the tempestuous events that have shaped our lives and quite possibly annoyed us beyond reason.

Amid all the festive tinsel and frivolous frippery, mums, dads, grandparents, aunties, cousins and uncles tiptoe gingerly over the chaotic tangle of ribbons, paper and toys as if it were some customary ritual that has to be negotiated every year whether they like it or not. Then mums run back into the kitchen frantically checking the parlous state of a simmering turkey in the oven. This may be the time to stop and take it easy. If we count to ten then nothing untoward will happen.

 She opens the oven, cries in pain at the horrendous condition of a charred ruin in the oven and wishes it could all be over. She waves at the oven with a submissive wave of a tea towel and then races back to the potato peeler. Here the roast potatoes are prepared with a loving attention to detail, vegetables are thrown onto another tray and none of us can understand the sheer magnitude of the day. We drink and eat to the point of bursting, let out a huge, regretful sigh at the end of the day and then reluctantly play either charades, Monopoly or Scrabble by way of compensation.

Then the children run up and down the stairs almost constantly, the dog keeps looking longingly at their owners for a three hour run in the local park or recreation ground and you try to keep your feelings to yourself. Meanwhile your nearest and dearest just help themselves to nibbles, savouries and egg nog refreshments because there's not a great deal to do. All is panic and pandemonium and it's probably best to leave them to it.

This afternoon Her Majesty the Queen will deliver her regal pearls of wisdom to the nation. It will be a pre-recorded speech which will be laced with immense gratitude, relief that although she may have thought the year as bumpy, she'll still be able to make Christmas cakes with her great great grandchildren and her husband Prince Philip, although hospitalised recently, looks in remarkably good shape for a 98 year old.

The rest of the afternoon will all be about choices and making the right decisions. Do we finally pander to the whims of our golden Labrador and head to those forests or parklands? Or alternatively  we could listen to the magical strains of Chris Rea's Driving Home For Christmas or Jona Lewie's wonderful anti war song Stop the Cavalry. We could settle down and listen to the comforting Pipes of Peace by the one and only Paul McCartney followed by his warm homage to the festive period The Christmas song.

But no matter how much we complain and moan at the sheer, unnecessary expense and commercialism of it all, there can be no denying that in a strange kind of way, most of us do genuinely feel there is a point and purpose to Christmas after all. Besides, it gives us the opportunity to open up channels of communication that would have been barred during the rest of the year because those in political power had nothing else to talk about but Brexit and its bleak ramifications.

On reflection though there can be no escaping the soft and cosy sentimentality of Christmas, the innumerable repeats of films we've seen a thousand times in the past and the relentless barrage of TV cookery programmes with those endless recipes for the perfect Christmas cake. And so it goes on. The celebrities will dress up in those frankly ludicrous red and white coats while on the other channels they'll be doing their utmost to ladle on the froth, glitter and good natured silliness.

Besides, there can only be so many times that you can show A Christmas Carol with Alistair Sim or White Christmas without asking questions why? And yet why ever not? It is after all Christmas and let the good times roll. Repetition can quite be uplifting. This year there has been no sighting of the classic It's a Wonderful Life starring the incomparable James Stewart. It's a Wonderful Life remains a film. of light, shade and blissful redemption, happy ever after.

In recent years we've all played along to the all action, hair raising, heroic and chivalric James Bond, the man who somehow manages to escape death when all around him are either being blown up or shot. Bond has become an almost traditional Christmas staple, as familiar as Santa Claus himself, a man dedicated to the safety and security of the free world.

By the end of this afternoon millions of children will gaze out of snow ringed windows, pointing at equally as snow caked gardens and tall, stately trees. And yet hold on there can be snow because none has been predicted on Christmas Day for some time, a disappointment for the younger ones and those who still believe that snow is somehow imperative for a proper Christmas. Why can't they be allowed to venture out onto thick white carpets with their toboggans or hastily built sleighs, sliding, thrilling, hurtling down challenging hills while adoring parents look on with a just a hint of anxiety?

Whatever you may be doing today this is an opportune moment to say once again that Christmas is essentially a day for the simple enjoyments of life, of being together as a family and singing those jolly old festive tunes. Outside a thousand roast chestnuts are crackling away soothingly by countless braziers. Oh and of course there are no buses or trains which you know about anyway.

Well over 50 years ago the London tube and overground railway system ran to full capacity on Christmas Day and none of us would have batted an eyelid. There was also a full old First Division football fixture list as well with some of the most bizarre results ever seen. Now though football and trains have taken a back seat on this day of days and now football plays its games on Boxing Day.

So here we are on Christmas Day ladies and gentlemen. The Holly and the Ivy are tinkling away quite aptly in the background, mum and dad are wearing the silliest paper hats you've ever seen and cousin Graham is wrestling with the latest incarnation of the X Box series or some brilliantly retro Hornby train set and rails.

 It has to be said that we've all had one or two many snowballs or vodka and tonics for our own good, there have been one too many kisses under the mistletoe for anybody's liking and when they all come to the table to devour the turkey and sprouts they'll be thinking back to those Christmases when the trains once ran on Christmas Day. It was a time when football was played with one of those heavyweight medicine balls, pitches resembled unsightly mud heaps and England football manager Gareth Southgate had yet to make his arrival.  Still wherever you are on this sacred and deeply religious day Merry Christmas everybody and will somebody pass me the cranberry sauce please? Thankyou, it's much appreciated.