Maybe it’s me, but this time of year with its twinkling lights and tinsel, and gifts and get-togethers make that empty chair feel a little bit emptier than it does the rest of the year.

The carols remind me of the out-of-tune voices that used to sing along. The card list is getting shorter, and there’s an air of times past hanging with the decorations on the tree.

The advertisements on the television don’t help either, with their chocolate-box perfect families. Holding hands around the table wearing matching jumpers, as the radio broadcasts tearful reunions of people returning home from far-flung places.

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The gaps we live with all year just feel that little bit wider when the Christmas lights shine through them.

My best Christmases were those when I tucked my two small, excited children into bed. Hardly daring to breathe as we listened out for the clip-clop of hooves on the roof, and woke up to the sooty footprints that Santa left across the wooden floor of the sitting room as he swept in and out on Christmas Eve, his impossibly tight schedule giving him no time to clean up after himself.

Certain years are more memorable than others.

There was the year I retrieved the boxes of chocolate, brought and hidden week-by-week in the bottom of the wardrobe, only to find them suspiciously light. My ‘human mice’ having found them and nibbled away at the bottom layer!

Then there was the year I proudly put the turkey and ham on the table only for my pre-teen daughter to tell me she had become a vegetarian.

And then, there was the Christmas my dad lived with me. It was the first we’d spent together in decades, and sadly his last, he died only months later. His hands spotted with age but still steady as we decorated the tree together, each ornament a tiny memory, a shared story. A final, precious Christmas before he left us, his presence the greatest gift of all.

My gift to him, along with a book and a pair of socks, was a navy blue cardigan.

He loved that cardigan and wore it most days, reluctantly parting with it once a week so I could wash it. When he died, I found I couldn’t part with it either, so for 17 years it hung in my wardrobe

You know the type. Cable-knitted with toggle buttons and suede patches on the elbows.

A real grandad’s geansaí.

The pockets, invariably stuffed with balled-up tissues, also held the Parker ballpoint pen which he used to complete The Times cryptic challenge every day as he sat, sipping his cup of coffee. The Chambers Dictionary open beside him as he scribbled on the margins of the paper in his daily fight with the crossword compiler.

He loved that cardigan and wore it most days, reluctantly parting with it once a week so I could wash it.

When he died, I found I couldn’t part with it either, so for 17 years it hung in my wardrobe.

My intention was always to do something with this reminder of my dear dad, but I was never sure what that something was until my phone-scrolling and searching finally turned up trumps.

Let us turn your loved-ones’ clothes into a memory of their life, the ad read.

After a flurry of emails back and forth, I made my decision. Taking the geansaí out of the wardrobe, I gently washed and dried it before wrapping it and queuing in the post office to send my precious package.

Less than a month later, I received a very special delivery of three small blue bears. Each one dressed in a miniature cardigan with little suede elbows, a pocket that’s perfect for a tiny tissue, a toggle button nose and glass eyes that twinkle in the lights of my tree.

One will shortly be embracing international travel as he wings his way to join my daughter in Australia; another has found his home upstairs on my son’s childhood bed.

And the third small bear is now perched on the arm of the recliner in the sunroom that Dad sat in as he drank his coffee and solved his crosswords.

An empty chair no more.