MY daughter’s letter to Santa gets more wordy with every passing year. Her prose is what would happen if newspaper columnists didn’t have editors.

Frustratingly, this bumper correspondence doesn’t actually ever contain any clues as to what she would like for Christmas. Instead, this year’s offering is broken up into chunks, including an introduction, pertinent life updates and a compilation of her favourite Christmas jokes.

There is also a section which lists a series of burning questions she has for Santa Claus.

Some of them, I don’t know the answers to, like which reindeer is his favourite and what Christmas movie depicts the most accurate representation of what life is like at the North Pole.

But there’s one that I can answer with certainty, despite never having spoken directly with the big man myself. She asked what powers Santa’s sleigh to allow it to fly. The answer is, of course, Christmas cheer. This was shown to great effect in the modern classic Christmas movie Elf.

It’s the only thing that makes sense. If there was a technological solution to aiding a sleigh’s flight across the globe without the need to stop to refuel, Elon Musk would have already found a way to monetise it.

Unfortunately, I must confess to not pulling my weight when it comes to our collective levels of Christmas cheer this year. If Santa’s sleigh doesn’t make it past Gretna Green on Christmas eve, I fear it will be all my fault.

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We got a new puppy a few weeks ago. Earlier in the year (when I was well-rested and full of optimism) I didn’t fully consider the inherent stupidity of bringing a new puppy home so close to Christmas. I thought a full month of him settling in, getting acclimatised and learning the house rules would be more than enough.

By Christmas Day, I thought, he would know the lay of the land and be able to participate in festivities with an appropriate level of enthusiasm – and restraint.

Ha! The puppy does not recognise my punitive house rules. Who am I to try and tell him not to eat tree baubles and not to pee on the carpet? Far from settling in, he has become even more emboldened in his wanton rule-breaking now he’s gotten to know me a wee bit better.

Which in itself is a damning indictment on my parenting methods.

He’s cute and sweet – when he’s asleep. In the hours he is awake he is a moving blur of teeth and fur.

My usual Christmas merry-making has been put on hold indefinitely. By this time of year, my daughter and I have usually spent an enjoyable five hours making paper snowflakes to hang on a giant garland in the hall.

I dare not even attempt it this year, for fear the puppy will manage to get hold of the scissors and become even more powerful and deadly than he is now.

My tree – my lovely, beautiful, precious tree – is now hidden behind an ugly makeshift barricade of coffee tables and random boxes. Once

it became clear this dog’s greatest ambition was to scale all 7ft of it, the tree had to be protected at all costs.

By the second week of December, my house usually smells of Christmas candles, mulled wine and cosy cooking. Not to put too fine a point on it but it currently smells of none of those things. It smells of puppy pee.

My Christmas movie schedule is totally off track. I can’t play Christmas music as I usually do because the puppy has a low tolerance for warbling and we’ve discovered the only music than calms him down, rather than amps him up, is a playlist called Jazz for Reading.

To add insult to injury, the wee fella can’t even read. He shows no indication that he understands the fact his tail is attached to his own body, given the hours he spends in a futile fight to the death with it.

The house is in disarray. I have numerous puncture wounds on my hands and legs from his tiny wee teeth. I can confidently predict that Christmas dinner this year is going to go down in history as one of my worst as I try to navigate scalding-hot goose fat and a puppy who prefers walking on my feet to walking on the floor.

It’s going to be chaos. It’s already chaos. But it might ultimately be for the best. Every year I get carried away with a desire for perfectionism at Christmas. I’ve never actually achieved the unreasonable standard I aspire to but I frantically scramble for it anyway. Year after year after year.

There is something freeing about knowing this year is going to be a bit of a disaster. And if the meat is overcooked and the wrapping isn’t as aesthetically pleasing as I would like, at least I know I won’t get any judgment from my furry wee pal.

He might be showing early signs of Grinch-like tendencies but he is still, when all is said and done, a very good boy.