Every day I have to walk past a small terraced house with windows facing the roadside. Last week a total stranger, who I now know lives in the house, approached me and intimated that I was causing him and his wife distress by looking in their window as I walk past. This is both untrue and very hurtful. So far I restricted my response to a verbal apology for any offence unintentionally caused. What else can or should I do to resolve my neighbours' unfounded grievance?

Stephen Godfrey, Didsbury

An Englishman's home is his castle. But in Didsbury Village, Manchester, they appear to fire on sight in order to repel all boarders without questions or quarter. There is nothing much more that you can do, provided that you are confident that you were not keyhole peeking. I should take care to walk on the other side of the road past the bristling fortress, humming and ostentatiously reading The Times. And I should invite the neighbours round to Christmas drinks and mince pies, in order to heap coals of fire upon their prickly and un-neighbourly heads.

What is the etiquette about rising to one's feet for the Hallelujah Chorus during the Messiah?

Steve Richards, Oxford

Allelujah Aoide, Muse of Song! It has become a tradition to stand up for the Hallelujah Chorus. At the first London performance, in Covent Garden Theatre (March 23, 1743), the whole assembly, with George II at its head, rose to its feet as this chorus opened, and remained standing to the end, thus establishing a tradition. The gossip is that George stood up because he had cramp or was bored. Be that as it may, Handel spoke of having composed the Hallelujah Chorus under the influence of great emotion: “I did think I did see all Heaven before me — and the great God himself.” It is a tradition that we honour more in the observance than the breach.

Auld Lang Syne: at what stage are hands and arms crossed and rejoined with the persons involved?

Peter Hughes, Burnham, Bucks

The final verse of the old song tells us that now is the moment to join hands: “And there's a hand my trusty fiere!/ And gie's a hand o' thine./ And we'll tak' a right gude wille-waught / For auld lang syne.” This information is otiose, as almost nobody knows more words of the song than a couple of lines. The common ignorant practice is to join hands after singing the lines that are known for the first time, and then to surge in and outward in a rowdy and untraditional round dance.

Are crackers absolutely necessary for traditional Christmas dinner?

Jack Laing, Manchester

These expensive and useless accessories are pretty well obligatory if there are children for Christmas. They keep the little darlings in anticipation at the table for a while longer. According to the leading cracker manufacturer (Tom Smith's), crackers were invented by the eponymous Tom Smith in 1847. Smith's idea was based on French bon-bons, sweets wrapped up in screwed-up coloured paper, to which he added first a motto, and then the characteristic snapper, inspired by a crackling log on his fire. It was an immediate success.

I am going to my new in-laws for Christmas dinner. I cannot eat stodge. How can I avoid stuffing and Christmas pudding without causing offence?

Anna P, Lincoln

It could be a declaration of war for a new daughter-in-law to reject her new mother's Christmas cookery. This is an occasion for you to swallow your faddishness as well as your mother-in-law's cooking.