Usually, when bands say they’re having a “Christmas Party”, my blood starts to boil, evaporate, condense and then boil again. This is nothing to do with the fact that Christmas is my least favourite major religious festival and more to do with the definition of “party”. Ninety-nine times out of one hundred it’s a thinly-veiled excuse to fleece you, the paying punter, and to trot out a set lashed together with half-rehearsed old guff and make you pretend they give an arse about you. Usually.

Broken Records, meanwhile, clearly have other ideas. In fact, after tonight, I think I’ve finally realised why my parents told me Santa didn’t exist. It’s because at Christmas, it’s actually this lot who fire up the reindeer and deliver all the seasonal pleasure you could ever want, even if you’ve been in a really, really fucking bad mood all year long.

In their bag of goodies tonight, at the top of the stocking, next to the satsuma, is Withered Hand. Edinburgh’s cuddliest band by some margin, Dan Wilson’s slightly pie-eyed band of troubadours – onstage drink-droppingly early – are on the finest of fettles. Neil Pennycook’s backing vocal (“he doesn’t even need a microphone”, laughs Wilson), provides some considerable welly as backstop to Dan’s shyly endearing melodies, and while the room fills up, the atmosphere in the room becomes gradually more and more like a real party, as people smile and chatter and stamp off the cold outside. It closes up with – of all things – a brand new Withered Hand Christmas song (“I wrote it specially”, says Dan), called ‘A Wonderful Lie’. Despite the near-uniform but good-natured groans at the title, we get treated to the usual Wilson insight,  disguised as naivety – the line “you’re breaking my hand when you shake it / do you think that it makes you more of a man?” in particular raises a wry smile. As Dan closes the set on the final chorus line of “Didn’t this used to be a holy day? / Put your head in my lap it’s a wonderful lie“, the room’s starting to get chattier. The party has started.

It gets another shot in the arm from the very, very wonderful Jesus H Foxx. Despite being a man down – reduced to just the two drummers, the two guitarists and the six members – and despite projecting an image of being a band that play the same songs at the same speed in the same room purely by accident, they are just getting better and better. ‘Oh Messy Life’ is as glorious as ever, but ‘I Make A Plan, She Makes A Plan’ is light years away from where it was back in January – still the same glorious nonsense, but just the smallest bit of added structure is the difference between (and here comes the obligatory Pavement reference) Wowee Zowee and Stereo. It’s loveable chaos, but with added pop, Jim. They also drop in a new one towards the end, and as with so many songs of theirs (like, for example, the lost and lamented Gorky’s) manage to pull off the difficult trick of being not just one but two amazing bands in one, all at the same time, in the space of one song. How they do this I do not know, but it’s quite something to see when it works.

Finally though, just as the party’s getting heaving, as parents and families of the bands are mixing freely with drunken locals, Broken Records arrive. No intro, just a blast of thunderous violin and we’re off to the races with ‘Nearly Home’. They rattle through a set of hometown-friendly tracks, with “If Elert Lovberg…” almost raising the roof. There was a new one in here too – zing, hat-trick – a martial, insistent little number, that will forever be overshadowed in the minds of everyone present by the completely bonkers version of ‘Fairytale Of New York’, featuring a visibly delighted Tallah from Jesus H Foxx in the Kirsty MacColl role. It was daftly under-rehearsed and if we hadn’t all been so drunk and comfortable and among friends, it would no doubt have been the biggest disaster in all of musical history. It was fucking magic though, and even this cold heart found it had some cockles still capable of warmth.

So in this case, the party that was exactly that, with three of Edinburgh’s finest sons, daughters and adopted children all making merry, and all inviting us to join in. Top that, Santa.