Christmas always gets me thinking about my old village pub. In my short lifetime, the pub has been through many ups and downs (and who knows what stories the walls could tell about its previous 300 years of its history), and it's Christmas Eve that seems to best measure the pub's varying fortunes.

For the first fifteen years of my life, the pub slumped in a melancholic stupor. Year on year, as the few pub regulars got older and increasingly haggard, so did its thatched roof, until it was so decrepit that it had to be covered completely in plastic sheeting.

The life inside the pub, by all accounts, was pretty bleak too. Christmas Eves were apparently miserable affairs – the same old lonely characters hunched over pints. Just as he did every other day of the year, boozer Joe would cycle to the pub at opening time, and just like every other day of the year he'd push it home at closing time, leaning heavily on it to stay on his feet. The only difference was that on Christmas Eve, he'd wear a Santa hat.

Then, finally, the moment the village had all been waiting for. The pub changed hands. Sadly, things improved only very slightly under the new landlord, Barry. The plastic sheeting remained.

Christmas Eve still saw the same motley mix of alcoholics, but now there were village teenagers too, trying to muster some Christmas cheer as they eked out their last coins on the pool table and meagre juke box selection (one play got you the whole of 20 minutes of side 1 or 2 of Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield, if you could bear it). Before long, though, the old alcoholic regulars were beginning to pass away.

Barry left as well, and a northern couple took over. The pub's brief ascent had begun. The roof was repaired, real ale was brewed on the premises, and there were fresh songs on the juke box. Still, there was no spark on Christmas Eve: the pub now was just good for "a quiet drink".

Before long again, this couple left, to be replaced by jovial Ciaran, who'd been running pubs for the previous twenty years. Things were very different: lock ins galore and Christmas Eve parties with live music and an impossibly cheesy disco. The pub began to regain its position as a village hub, bursting at the seams with conversation and jokes. People made plans to meet their friends there, or just turned up to see what was going on. For a brief spell it seemed like it was revived for good. But, sadly, after a chaotic five years, Ciaran had to file for bankruptcy, and the pub's current chapter began.

It is now a gastro pub. The juke box is no more. The pool table and darts board have gone: in their place are tables laid out with cutlery. The pub is a success (fully booked for food a week in advance).

But music has been slowly phased out of Christmas Eve until last year there was nothing but polite chatter: that rare sense of cameraderie had vanished. The Christmas spell was so brief! I'm going to boycott the pub this time round, but I'm not too glum. I've heard that the pub in the next village is back on the ascendency and that Christmas Eve there is something to be celebrated again.

.