OUR Christmas is usually considered to be the most heavily influenced by the Germans and the Americans. The Germans gave us the tree and the carols; the Americans dressed Father Christmas in the red and white of the Coca-Cola bottle.

But this week, standing in the spiegeltent which has sprouted in Darlington Market Place, I began considering the influence of the Low Countries.

The spiegeltent is a beautiful collection of Art Nouveau curves, all dark wood, coloured glass, turned columns, twinkled tassels, sweeping material and, of course, sparkling mirrors – “spiegeltent” is Dutch for “mirror tent”. Spiegeltents were first created in the late 19th Century in the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium as mobile dance halls, and they lasted into the Roaring Twenties.

About ten spiegeltents survive and now they tour the world hosting events. The Darlington spiegeltent is here until Christmas, hosting craft classes, markets, concerts and Rocket Town beer, and is well worth a look to marvel at its opulence.

Then, in the Lloyd family fridge, I was surprised to spot fully two weeks before Christmas Day a stalk of Brussels sprouts. When I questioned the wisdom of such an early purchase, I was told that these were purple Brussels sprouts, a new and happening variety, and that they needed to be roadtested before they were unleashed on the festive plate.

Other people in our street are excited about receiving a trending voice-activated Amazon Echo or a new-fangled virtual reality PlayStation this Christmas but for us the only concession to modernity is a new sprig of coloured sprouts.

I had never previously considered the nature of Brussels, and, when I looked into them, I was pleased to discover that yes they do and, indeed, they most certainly do and the Dutch have a word to prove it…

First of all, yes, they do come from Belgium.

Sprouts began as a cabbage-type plant growing somewhere near Iran. The Romans cultivated them, but the first large scale farming of them began in the Low Countries near Brussels where the cool, damp conditions suited them – the earliest mention of them in the Brussels market regulations is in 1213. Today, the Netherlands – where they are called “spruitjes” – is Europe’s biggest exporter of sprouts.

However, even in the Low Countries, the sprout was never especially popular among diners – in the 18th Century, they were grown more for their edible green tops than their tight buds, and the 19th Century fashion was to grow them as garden ornaments rather than crops.

The only reason they are a Christmas vegetable is that they continue to grow in the cool weather into December – indeed, Dutch farmers would have us believe they are sweeter once they have been kissed by the first frost of the winter.

Even though there are 110 varieties of Brussels sprouts, in the 1940s, a Dutch grower, CN Vreeken, crossbred a sprout with a red cabbage to produce the purple sprout which is now blocking the Lloyd fridge.

All Brussels are extremely nutritious – a 80mg serving contains four times as much Vitamin C as an orange. However, they also have a high sulphurous content. When over-boiled, they break down and fill the kitchen with a rotten egg aroma; when digested, they break down and fill the gut with a similar aroma which, as every schoolboy knows, can be flatulently expelled.

Indeed, just as the Dutch have a word for mirror tent – spiegeltent – so they have a word for “Brussels sprout air”: “spruitjeslucht”. I’ll just leave that hanging…