Black Friday is not another bad hair day in Wall Street. It's the term used by American retailers to describe the day after the Thanksgiving Holiday, seen as the semi-official start of Christmas shopping season.

It may be a cliche, but it's true - the build-up to Christmas is so much more pleasurable than the actual day itself.

One Christmas build-up tradition, however, has totally bypassed me - that of going up to town and 'doing a show.'

If you pray enough for things, I am proof that they can happen. I feel like a kid on Christmas day now, every day. It's something I have wanted for a long time and I am as happy as anyone to be here. It is great to be back at my first love.

There's never really been a real hood Christmas movie.

I remember wishing there was snow in L.A. And how jealous we used to get of those Christmas specials with kids playing in the snow.

I've been playing on Christmas for the last 10,11, 12 years. So just got to get up early with the babies, and give them their toys and try to get a nap in and just come to play.

Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it.

Brits and Americans have hundreds of different phrases for the same thing. Luckily, it's usually a source of amusement rather than frustration. A flashlight by any other name is still a torch. My personal favourite is 'fairy lights,' which we boringly refer to as 'Christmas lights.'

From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it.