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I began writing notes on this meditation to share with you, as I was preparing to go onstage at the Barbican’s Milton Court theatre, to narrate the story of forgotten African American classical composers, in the company of musicologist and pianist extraordinaire Dr Samantha Ege and her equally extraordinaire pianist colleague Artina McCain.

Florence Price

Played on two grand pianos facing one another, the music of these early 20th-century composers, revived and recorded by Samantha, performed brilliantly live by her and by Artina, and celebrated by the three of us in a concert titled "Black Renaissance" made for a thrilling evening.

What a gift to rediscover and "re-birth" the wonderful music of composers Florence Price, Zenobia Powell Perry, Robert Nathaniel Dett and Helen Eugenia Hagan. The audience were on their feet, the applause long and rousing. My heart was full.

I grew up in a house where music was central... classical and traditional folk music, and African-heritage music from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean… but ne’er the twain ever met. So this discovery of forgotten African heritage classical music gives me the most enormous joy.

It causes me to think of my Ghanaian musician grandmother, a guitarist in a palm court orchestra amongst the 1920s fast set in Ghana’s Cape Coast. I think of my father accomplished on guitar, like his mum, but also on flute, piano, acoustic bass and mandolin, a regular member of folk groups throughout the late 60s and 70s, and still at 90 a stalwart of his local choral society in South Gloucestershire. I think too of my brother and eldest nephew both composers and professional musicians, and particularly at this time of year I think of the music of Christmas, in our childhood home.

To this day in my book there is no Christmas without Mary’s Boy Child sung by Harry Belafonte. But in our house, our live and direct Harry was dad on guitar with backing singers my mum, my brother and me – all joining in, in front of a log fire roaring and spitting in the 16th-century inglenook fireplace of our low-ceilinged, thick-walled, Cotswold agricultural labourer's cottage home. Incidentally I took dad to meet Harry Belafonte at a book signing for his autobiography in Brixton a few years ago and they sang together in front of the signing desk, dad and Harry – a wonderful full circle.

Still Harry aside, I remember the precious long ago Christmas ornaments wrapped in tissue paper re-emerging annually in reverent clammy little hands, the snow globes, the wooden nativity scene – a gift to my dad from my godmother and her husband, Tante Sigrid and Onkel Karl-Heinz. The white plastic polar bear, and the glassblown bambi. I would spend ages just gazing at mum’s shining, chiming, brass whirligig of angels, blowing trumpets as they span, powered in their spinning by the heat of little red candles lit beneath their flowing gowns.

The halls were indeed decked if not with boughs of holly, then with substantial red berried twigs of holly… and with balls of white-berried mistletoe hanging in anticipation over every possible doorway; and then there was the tree, dug up from the garden and subjected once more to heating, tinsel, toffees tied to the branches and the inevitable baubles and angels and the star lighting the way to the top of the tree – nature indoors – some of the upsides of living deep in the Cotswolds...

And there was always the smell of simmering Glühwein, of cloves in oranges; the swaying loops of brightly coloured homemade paper chains – the memory of the taste of that paperchain glue present on my tongue still – the children’s all-colour bible opened to the relevant passages, the readings shared between us, hot-cheeked and cosy.

There would be nuts in their shells in a bowl and nutcrackers to hand – if you wanted a walnut, a brazil nut, a philbert, you had to work those crackers to release it – no easy handfuls in those days. The Chocolate Tin was officially off limits until Christmas day, although frankly the restuck sellotape around the lid was fooling no one; especially once the dearth of green triangles became apparent on Christmas afternoon. When Mum would have her annual "snowball" – Advocaat and lemonade with a glacé cherry on a cocktail stick: "I only have it for the cherry, "she would insist.

And of course, on the eve of Christmas, along with carrots for the reindeer, and sherry and a Nana-Jessie special mince pie for Santa, there were always the painstakingly crafted lists to Father Christmas, earnestly written out in our best handwriting, then ceremoniously thrown on to the fire by sleepy pyjama’d me and my brother – the penultimate act before rushing to bed so we could wake up the sooner and it would be Christmas morning at last!

The final act... checking that mum had placed our empty pillowcases at the foot of our beds ready to be mysteriously filled in the night – satsumas and a selection box a given – checking over, now all would be well and we could snuggle down, satisfied with our world.

These were the sounds, smells. tastes, images and rituals of my childhood Christmas, my Christmas template if you will. Oh the comfort of the certainty of those Christmas rituals, a template I continued with my children when they were little and frankly when quite a bit bigger too.

The certainty of those rhythms and rituals is perhaps one of Christmas’s greatest appeals and one of the most painful lacks when not available to us because of circumstance or loss or hardship.

And whatever our faith, our particular rituals, the comfort they bring and the ache for them we experience when we aren’t able to engage in those traditions, is the same for all peoples everywhere.

We live at all times in uncertain times and so these poignant festivals and memorialising moments in our lives, can be bittersweet.

Holding our nerve in times of uncertainty is something we have all had to come to terms with in the past few years and I am reminded of a wonderful event I was invited to take part in at St Paul’s Cathedral earlier in the autumn, reflecting on the Psalms, and led by the amazing Christian theologian, and Canon Chancellor at the Cathedral, Dr Paula Gooder.

We gathered on a late October evening. In front of a congregation of around 200. I was introduced by the Cathedral’s director of music, Andrew Carwood and the evening then went like this: I would read a psalm, Paula would speak on the Psalm and then the choir would sing the psalm a cappella, the voices reverberating around the Cathedral’s dome as we sat in silence, listening, drinking in the echoes, the thoughts, the prayers, the yearnings.

Paula reflected brilliantly on the variety of the Psalms, prayers of orientation – orientation as in Psalm 19: you are my guide, I feel your presence and I’m so grateful to be heading in the direction you want for me; or prayers of disorientation – God where are you, why have you abandoned me, help! (as in Psalm 69); or prayers of reorientation, as in the much loved Psalm 23 – even in the most difficult of circumstances you are with me, it is hard, but I am not alone.

Each month the entire book of Psalms – the psalter – is sung at the Cathedral. The psalms – the sacred songs, poems and prayers to God, first expressed by the fleeing exiled and worshipping people of ancient Israel – are prayers now extended across the world, prayed constantly.

Even if you are having the best time leaning into your Psalm 19 vibe, somewhere else in the world someone full of distress is feeling abandoned and hopeless, crying to God in the outrage and desperation of Psalm 69, and yet another person is holding tight to the belief of the Psalmist in Psalm 23, that though they walk through the valley of death, God is at their side. A prayer cycle to cover all eventualities, prayed at all times, for all people. How wonderful to know whoever we are, in whatever circumstances, of whatever faith or none, we are constantly in the prayers, thoughts, hearts and minds of someone somewhere wishing good to us. I’ve always drawn comfort and assurance from this.

As we sit in the end days of the year, looking towards the new beginning that lies in the year to come, I wish us a good rebirth with discoveries and rediscoveries aplenty; may we remember moments of joyous ritual and tradition and be filled anew with the sense of possibility those certainties can afford us.
We all need comfort: "com-fort", "with strength" – may we feel strengthened in the knowledge that we are named, known, seen and heard, in all circumstances divine and mortal.

May we all be shepherded well and with love in the year ahead.

Happy Boxing Day!