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Christmas in Ireland isn’t just a day; it’s a carefully constructed house of cards with relatives, relationships, and deeply polarising debates about what qualifies as gravy. It’s a time for family, friends and magic; a great time to catch up and take a break from daily toils for a seasonal celebration of the year passed, and the new one coming. It really can be the most wonderful time of the year, but it can all be a bit much at times.
I don’t know about you, but Christmas has me stressed. Every year, I tell myself I won’t let it get to me, but every year it does. Thundering at me like a sleigh filled with deadlines, goalposts, lists of people I need to get back to, people I need to meet up with, emails to ‘close off before the Christmas break’, expenses, lists, and endless household tasks, all piled on top of a giant list of presents still to be bought, the costs and numbers of which seem to go up and up every single year.
It’s a mad rush to get everything done before the New Year purge, and we’re all in a race against ourselves, the ticking countdown to the big day made louder with words of “are you all set” bombarding our, until hearing that phrase, previously subdued internal panic attacks that have been brewing from the second last week in November. I’ve managed to escape seasonal depression the last few years, but this year I wonder whether I might have just skipped straight to the year-round variety. I’ll come back to that one in my own time…
Humans are fanatics by nature, and it’s never as obvious as is at Christmas. We take on too much, refuse to say no to anything, and want to give everything our all.
That’s not all you’ve to contend with. Family drama, friend drama, the will I/won’t I gift considerations. The Santa lists, the Christmas market anxiety, the annual ‘what the hell am I going to wear to my work Christmas party’ debacle, the random Kris Kringle gifts, the endless charity appeals. Everybody else is going through it too, and because we all love to deflect, instead of dealing with their own lists, many decide that it’s time to offload some tasks onto yours. And you don’t blame them either, because you’ve done the same, and worse.
Humans are fanatics by nature, and it’s never as obvious as is at Christmas. We take on too much, refuse to say no to anything, and want to give everything our all. It can all get a bit too much sometimes, especially at this time of year, which is why you may find that you or somebody you love, who is usually patient, kind, understanding, and totally reasonable, can become a Santa hat-wearing Dementor on overdrive with a to-do list as long as the list of unreasonable expectations we put on ourselves, our families, anybody around us, and the holiday season itself. The most ridiculous of these expectations being making sure you and all those you love, have ‘The Perfect Christmas’.
The season pushes everybody who allows it into sheer panic. Perfectly reasonable people 11 months of the year become nutcases from December 1 until January 2, with a little bit of food coma-induced rest in between. Laid-back individuals lose the run of themselves, in a plethora of different ways. Some decide their poison of choice is to go insane at the work Christmas party, others spend until their bank decides to flag their account for fraud, many queue in the cold for hours for this year’s social media-crowned must-have. I’ve known people to buy multiple boxes of the best bakery’s mince pies, when they don’t even like them — but Instagram told them they were the best, and it was the last day to collect. Reader, all of these examples are me. But I know I am not alone!
We are all our own little Christmas menace, harmless to all but waistbands and wallets. However, I am here to warn you about a certain type of Christmas lunatic you need to be careful of, look out for, and potentially stop before it gets out of hand. The Christmas ghost I fear the most, and who you should too, is the self-imposed, self-designated Christmas chef.
You know the type; the person who takes on the huge responsibility of managing the entire Christmas dinner. They mean well, but realistically, unless you’re a professional chef or incredible home cook, and even then, it is a huge undertaking and can very often go very, very wrong.
You’ve promised your kids to bring them in to see the nativity at the village, before swinging by to visit Auntie Maura, to then pop in to Nana, followed by Granny, all before coming home to cook a three-course dinner with five different types of potatoes.
Let’s look at it with some perspective. For many, it’s an early morning after one of the year’s heaviest sessions, Christmas Eve. You get to sleep in, if you’re lucky, until about 9am. You’ve promised three different people you’ll see them out for a morning swim. You’ve told your cousin you’ll be at their house “no later than noon”, you’ve promised your kids to bring them in to see the nativity at the village, before swinging by to visit Auntie Maura, to then pop in to Nana, followed by Granny, all before coming home to cook a three-course dinner with five different types of potatoes. I think there’s meant to be a fry, some selection boxes, and a few Baileys, brandies and Irish coffees in between.
People who don’t even know what a candied carrot is start making them in between stuffing a giant bird they don’t like, cook, or eat anytime other than December 25, with whatever citrus, spice and herbs they have, following a crinkled print off recipe from BBC Good Food. Coca Cola ham bubbles, while bacon Brussels sprouts burn.
The Christmas chef— with the best of intentions and an unrealistic understanding of the role—has a huge amount of pressure on their shoulders. And while we must say thanks that they have decided, for the greater good, to forgo any enjoyment of the day in order to be the chef of the family, we also need to be realistic in our expectations.
Many Christmas chefs step into the role blind, and after a year of sticking with the same seven day rotation of Hello Fresh meals, sporadically interrupted by Deliveroos and TikTok recipes, they insist now to become their very own Mary Berry. They refuse any shortcuts, and turn up their nose at the very idea of store-bought breadcrumbs, pastry or gravy. They are making it all, from scratch, and you’re the idiot for asking why. It doesn’t need to be this hard, and I am here with some advice from some of the country’s very best in food and drinks.
