Once upon a time, the appearance of Starbucks’ iconic red cups signaled the beginning of the holiday season, sparking debates over whether the designs were sufficiently festive or reflective of Christmas traditions. With anticipation, customers would line up for seasonal favorites like the Caramel Brulee Latte or Peppermint Mocha, eager to embrace the festive spirit.

However, much has transformed in the 17 years since my last voluntary visit to a Starbucks. Beyond the fact that nearly every coffee chain now unveils an annual holiday-themed cup, my personal marker for the onset of the Christmas season has evolved significantly.

For nearly a decade now, my holiday season unofficially kicks off with a heartfelt Christmas greeting to someone I won’t see again until the new year: my neurologist.

Every quarter, I find myself in his office, receiving Botox injections in my neck muscles to manage my dystonic tics. After each session, I head home, but not before wishing him a merry Christmas at our late October or early November appointment.

In recent years, he has chosen not to reciprocate the greeting directly. Instead, he acknowledges the season’s approach with a comment about how the holidays are drawing near.

This year, determined to start the festivities on my own terms, I decided the Christmas season was underway as I lay inside the humming, whirring tube of an MRI machine.

It’s a “bit of fun” I go through approximately every 12 weeks as someone who has incurable bowel cancer. The most recent one should be the last of the year so that Christmas can begin.

The science bit is that the MRI scanner uses a powerful magnet and radio waves to produce detailed cross-sectional images of soft tissues, muscles, nerves, and blood vessels.

The images help my medical team work out whether my tumours have been naughty, and have spread far and wide throughout my body so I might not live to see old acquaintance be forgot at the start of 2026, or whether they’ve been nice.

If they completely disappeared, they would be high on Father Christmas’s nice list, but that’s not going to happen. Instead, the best that I can hope for is for them to have stayed the same size as they were during my previous scan.

I’d also love it if the scan results show that the dead bits of my lungs and kidneys, as recorded in the scan three months ago, haven’t increased in size.

It’s a stressful time waiting for results, especially as no one knows precisely when they will be available. They should be ready in time for my next appointment with my medical team, so if there is bad news, they can come up with a new plan to help me kick cancer in the face.

But when I asked my medical team this week, they unhelpfully said there’s a backlog of scans, so they can’t say for sure if the results will be ready.

One thing’s for sure, though, and that’s the fact that, weirdly, the stress around scans and results makes it much easier to buy Christmas presents.

I used to spend weeks planning the perfect gifts for my family and hours in shops to get precisely the right thing because I always thought I wasn’t good enough and hadn’t achieved anything in my life. In my head, I felt that if I bought them something nice, then they would be a little bit glad about my existence.

I still try to get everyone great gifts, but I think very differently. Now I believe that me still being alive is everyone’s present and if I can top this up with a nice book or a box of Celebrations then everyone’s a winner.

Not every cancer patient has my f***-it attitude during the festive season, and it can be a very tricky time as people compare how life has been this year to before they were ill.

Talking about it can help a lot, so I’m leading the Daily Express’s Cancer Care campaign. We want every cancer patient to have access to mental health support, both during and after treatment.