It’s fierce cold in Dublin tonight. I came home from the shop with damp boots and that particular ache in my shoulders you only get from hauling boxes of battered hardbacks, fully intending to do nothing more strenuous than drink tea and tune my fiddle.

Then I opened the community feed and found myself completely swept up in the Dutch contingent prepping for Sinterklaas. I’ll admit, the whole lore has always sounded wonderfully magical to an Irish ear. Over here, we just wait for Daidí na Nollag to quietly drop down the chimney in the dead of night, but you lot get a grand old gentleman arriving in broad daylight on a steamboat from Spain, riding a white horse across the rooftops.

The nostalgia in the posts today has been lovely, but the real clincher was popping onto our community Minecraft server earlier. Some absolute legends have spent an ungodly amount of hours building an entire canal harbour, complete with a towering steamboat and little pixelated banners flapping in the wind. Ciara looked over my shoulder while the kettle boiled and asked why there was an elaborate Dutch port in the middle of our digital forest, and honestly, the sheer craic of it made my evening. There’s something properly cosy about carrying childhood traditions into a blocky video game just to share the warmth.

It genuinely feels like the official marker that the dark winter months are finally here, even if it's arriving by virtual boat.

For those of you celebrating, what’s your favourite bit of tradition around the arrival? And more importantly, who on earth was responsible for that magnificent boat build?