Many Christmas traditions will have to sit this year out. We may not be allowed an office party. Kissing under the mistletoe will be verboten. Even pulling a cracker may be tricky if we have to stay two metres apart.

One tradition that we can do from a distance is watch the Christmas adverts from certain stores. The most anticipated one is the John Lewis ad. If you’re avoiding Lakeside after the lockdown this could be as close to shopping there as you get.

Their past adverts have included a man who lives on the moon on his own. In the advert a little girl sends him a telescope. Not a ticket back or a way to communicate, but a telescope so that he may see other people having fun in greater clarity and feel even more isolated.

Another year their ad showed us animals jumping on a garden trampoline, letting us glimpse the future after humanity has fallen.

Last year’s featured a dragon who accidentally set fire to things in an olden day village where most buildings were made of wood. Forget the Yuletide spirit, health and safety says they should have banished him.

Their 2020 ad shows people being helpful. From a girl helping a boy get a football down from a tree to a lady fixing someone’s broken spectacles, the message is be kind.

Start small. We could try not honking our car horns at people who don’t pull off at light as quickly as we’d like. Try not tutting if someone takes a little bit longer to find their purse at the till.

We could graduate to helping short people reach top shelves and lifting prams upstairs. Go on, be nice, it’s Christmas. Not long till January when we can go back to being grumpy.