IT was the first First Minister’s Questions since the election and the last before Christmas recess.

Oddly enough, the opposition party leaders didn’t seem full of festive cheer.

What happened to make them so reluctant to go rockin’ around the Christmas tree? Why was there so little jingle in their bells? It’s a mystery.

Nicola Sturgeon, on the other hand, had a bounce in her step. Not since her celebration after taking East Dunbartonshire from Jo Swinson has she looked so jubilant.

Jackson Carlaw used his questions to accuse the First Minister of having “one priority” in government. He said there was no prize for guessing what it was. Scrooge.

He read out a list of areas that he says the Scottish Government are failing in, including ferries, trains, hospitals, partridges and pear trees.

In response, Nicola Sturgeon said the record of her party was put before the Scottish people last week, they gave their verdict “and I think Jackson Carlaw knows very well what that was”.

There were no prizes for guessing that either. These party leaders really don’t understand the season of goodwill and giving.

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Then the party leader that oversaw the dubious “tell her again” General Election campaign against indyref2 (great work by the way, lads) accused the First Minister of “showboating before the cameras” for the statement she gave about the request she has made for a Section 30 order from the UK Government.

Carlaw asks Sturgeon about indyref nearly every week but gets very annoyed if she talks about it without him being in the room. I hear he’s working on his abandonment issues in 2020.

“I’m sure I’m not the only one who is struck by the fact that Jackson Carlaw’s angry demeanour is always in inverse proportion to his levels of confidence,” quipped Sturgeon in reply.

If you were to guess which MSP had a sideline job as one of Santa’s elves, you’d probably say Willie Rennie.

That cheeky grin and childlike joy we see during election campaigns (but never after) has many people suspicious.

Sadly, he seemed to have lost his Christmas sparkle yesterday. Adopting a new persona as Grinch-in-Chief, Willie Rennie made it crystal clear that he was NOT PLEASED ABOUT SOMETHING. Many things, actually.

He, like Carlaw, had brought a list to the chamber but he didn’t need to check it twice because he’d memorised it off by heart, like a big boy.

In a lengthy speech that prompted heckling from SNP MSPs who thought he was taking the piss a bit, he asked the First Minister about childcare entitlement, hospitals, maths, science, renewables, homelessness services, the cost of ferries, ScotRail and mental health waiting times.

All very important issues but you’d think, given what happened last week, he would have squeezed in another question to the First Minister, maybe something along the lines of: “Can you teach me how to win an election?”

“I can’t help but feel for the opposition parties this week,”

said Sturgeon, somewhat insincerely. “Their frustration is absolutely palpable.”

I predict that the Christmas recess will do little to cheer up opposition party leaders. They’ve got some big decisions ahead. Do they agree with Boris Johnson that democracy ceased to apply to Scotland in September 2014? How do they square the commitments made during the independence referendum with the stocking full of broken promises we’ve seen since?

History doesn’t allow for hiding places. Will they consign themselves to the naughty list and walk hand in glove with the ghosts of Christmas past in denying Scotland’s right to self-determination?

We’ll have to wait and see.