During the festive season, I usually spend far too much time thinking and talking about politics. But the latest was an exception. One hostess fixed me with a gimlet eye and announced that she had forbidden any discussion of Israel/Palestine. At a recent dinner party, the table had been repeatedly banged, someone had stormed out and others were now on non-speaks. I quoted the late Clarissa Eden. During the Suez crisis, she felt that the Canal was running through her drawing-room. This girl gave a hearty nod in agreement.

I was happy to agree with the ban, but declared my surprise. How could anyone be so sure of the solution? The most I could come up with was ruminative gloom. Everything that is bad will get worse, and it is hard to escape the conclusion that since 1945, western policy towards the Muddle East has had more failure than successes.

This was not just a rosé. It was a wine: a thoroughly worthwhile experiment

It may be something to do with age, but I found myself increasingly preoccupied with religion, though still locked in a paradox. Religious by temperament, I cannot believe. Even so, there is consolation in the aesthetics of faith.

There is also abiding scope to ponder the history of the dear C of E. One plosive account was written by an Irishman, Brendan Behan, in a single sentence: ‘The Church of England was founded on the balls of Henry VIII.’ Although that is a crude over-simplification, it is reasonable to imagine the religious changes which that dreadful monarch set in motion as originating in the sort of bedroom scene which disgusts Hamlet as he imagines Claudius and his mother.

But Henry’s chaos was redeemed by his daughter Elizabeth’s Anglo-Catholicism. It is to her that we owe Anglicanism’s Beauty of Holiness. The festival of lessons and carols is an uplifting experience, as is so much of the C of E at its best. The carols, the Hymnal, the cathedrals, the parish churches. This is now and England.

Or is it? Sometimes it seems as if today’s Church is caught between the happy-clappys and the wokers. Can the via media Anglicana reassert itself? In discussion along these lines, someone said it was no good my being a flying buttress and supporting the Church from outside. Get inside. Well, I cannot: I lack faith. But I hope other sensible people rally round, otherwise the Church will decline into a mere museum and concert hall.

I did not drink much wine that rivalled the music. There was a bottle of Suduiraut 1976. Would it have lasted? Yes: nothing new to say, but still delicious. Some 30-year-old Highland Park: that is a tremendous whisky.

It is also pleasant to report progress on my friend Grahame McGirr’s efforts to teach Tuscans how to make wine. The other day, he proffered a rosé. My scepticism overflowed. This would no doubt be a thoroughly pleasant drink under a parasol next to his swimming pool in high summer. But a dreich London day in midwinter? Yet it worked. This was not just a rosé.It was a wine. L’esperimento: a thoroughly worthwhile experiment.

Grahame’s real aim is adventure, not experiment. He intends to produce a super-Tuscan, called L’avventura, and I was invited to help deal with one of the first bottles. Only three years old, it had all the necessary ingredients: length, structure, tannin and fruit. It is good but will ripen and mature. Forty per cent Sangiovese, 30 per cent Cabernet Sauvignon, 30 per cent Merlot: a characteristic super-Tuscan blend. Grahame supervised the first tasting like an anxious father. But he need not have feared. The newborn lived up to expectations.

Newborn: that reminds us what all the celebrations mean. We can only hope they will not be followed by a further massacre of the innocents.