Read "Told after Supper" by Jerome K. Jerome online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It was Christmas Eve.
I begin this way because it is the proper, orthodox, respectable way to begin, and I have been brought up in a proper, orthodox, respectable way, and taught to always do the proper, orthodox, respectable thing; and the habit clings to me.