With Christmas on our doorstep, the housewife in me has leapt out and taken over the real Irene. Not that I’m a bad housewife during the rest of the year, just that housewife Irene now controls my days with an iron grip. Christmas for me has always been a one and a half week long food galore. So I bake. Bread, pulla, buns, muffins with cheese and ham, and cookies - I even had to throw out some ice cream to make everything fit in the freezer. And we're not even at home during Christmas. We're off to Belgium. Mind you we'll be back for the New Year’s weekend. And then we'll eat. A lot.

In preparation for this feast I've cleaned the whole apartment and tidied everywhere, even in closets we hardly ever open. This is as it should be. The presents were bought, wrapped and delivered in November. I’ve already looked over the Christmas table clothes for stains. I, who never even iron my table clothes, have now checked my table clothes for stains one week before it’s time to put them on. I've even sat down to plan dinners for the New Year’s weekend, and confirmed plans with my slightly less enthusiastic boyfriend.

Of course I must have all the preparing and shopping done before we go to Belgium so that when we get back we can just throw ourselves in the couch and concentrate on the eating and relaxing. Really I blame my parents. It’s seeing your mother and grandmother spend December preparing the house for Christmas. Our house was transformed from the average home with dust in the corners to clean red and green, smelling like a mixture of cakes, cookies, Christmas tree, clementines and nuts.

That sort of thing, I confess, really got me in the Christmas ganglies – that and my much older and very much looked up to sister and brother arriving with their better halves. Nothing beats the good old feeling of your whole family gathered for Christmas. Not even the big pile of presents.

Now that I live with my boyfriend in an apartment slightly bigger than the average student twelve metres square, the house transformation experience of my Christmas youth has turned out to have a small side effect. I really feel like I should prepare the apartment and make sure we have ten times more food and drinks than we normally eat during a week.  There should be no dust. Everything should be decorated, smell Christmassy, and most of it should be edible.

No one, I think -let’s face it - wants cereal for Christmas breakfast or chicken pasta for supper. No no, there’ll be buns, smoked salmon, pork roast, caramel pudding for dessert, cakes and coffee, and more buns as a late night snack. Just like my mom does it - only for two people who won't be here for more than three days before the holidays are over, who will no sooner have eaten than they’ll diet to get rid of the pork roast and caramel pudding.

I might be loosing my mind. Either that or my housewife’s instinct is telling me I need to start practising for Christmases with five screaming kids, a husband and a dog.