Family, friends and children are all the ingredients needed for Christmas dinner - Christa Ackroyd

There were traditions that were repeated year upon year. And there was a comfort and a sense of safety in that. Mum would be up at 6am to cram in the turkey in her tiny cooker. The said turkey had been collected from Uncle Lance and Aunty Nellie carefully reared on their farm the week before and left storing in the cold of the garage. There wasn’t a fridge big enough in those days let alone ones that serve chilled water and told you the temperature on a digital monitor. If it became frosty it was too high and not cold enough too warm.

The sprouts would have been peeled the night before - no Jamie Oliver pan frying with chestnuts in our day. No they were for roasting on the said open fire until mum decided enough was enough, changed to gas, and stopped worrying about them exploding over her carefully cared for carpet. The carrots were not drizzled in honey and boiled in orange juice, they were just carrots – and of the same colour. Pigs in blankets were homemade and secured with cocktail sticks to stop them unravelling and the Bisto powder and a stock cube were added to the meat juices in the roasting pan to make the most delicious gravy, the likes of which I have never quite been able to replicate. Stuffing was out of a packet from Paxo with the added culinary twist of a chopped onion. Bread sauce the same. And cranberry sauce was a once a year accompaniment from a jar, half eaten and left untouched in the pantry until it was past its sell by date. Potatoes were not par boiled or roasted in goose fat but in lard with a knob of Stork margarine.

There was no choice for starters. Even though my grandma was a vegetarian, unheard of in the sixties, she had a handmade (and it took hours for mum to do grating by hand ) nut roast and a prawn cocktail served in mismatched wine glasses without the prawns. The sauce for the aforementioned treat was always the same. A squeeze of ketchup and blob of salad cream mixed with double cream and a generous splash of Harvey’s Bristol cream saved during the year for a good old fashioned sherry trifle or the odd schooner for dad in the evening. One bottle would last for years.

For pudding, well Christmas pudding of course. It was Bird’s powdered custard with a dash of cream for seasonal luxury. No brandy sauce, mum tried it once but decided as a Methodist who didn’t drink we had quite enough alcohol in the prawn cocktail. Though every year just before everyone arrived we made her a snowball mixing Advocaat with lemonade and a cherry on a plastic sword cocktail stick because she said it didn’t taste like alcohol.

It was the little extras I remember. The Christmas roses (hellebores) cut from the garden on Christmas morning so they would be fresh, kept on the windowsill in a Shipham’s paste jar until the table, having been laid by me and my brother, was inspected and deemed fit for purpose. The china used on high days and holidays had been taken out of the dresser. The best linen table clothes pressed and ironed, sometimes even starched, and real napkins given the same treatment. In the best room, in case there was room for even more food, the Tupperware party Susan which had been strictly out of bounds until the evening had been filled with nuts, brazils, salted and with raisins, liquorice All Sorts, Terry’s chocolate Neapolitans and the lid kept on until we were seated in front of the telly. I can hear mum now as dad prized it open while settling down to watch his seasonal favourite Morecambe and Wise Christmas special “Maurice you can’t still be hungry .. go on then I will just have a handful of nuts” before passing them around to guests as we munched through our selection boxes.

Then there was the box of After Eights, not just an ordinary box but the pull out variety with its little red tag aside the bowls of crisp and Twiglets atop the coffee table I didn’t have room for but could never part with, just beside the box of dates which only dad liked and would take him a month to finish.

And that was it. Year in and year out. A house full again or a run out on Boxing Day to meet up with aunties and uncles who were really just close friends, when open sandwiches made from bridge rolls would be decorated with cress and triangles of cucumber and tomatoes to make the egg and the salmon spread seem more special as part of a buffet when the stacking stools came out and once again we would eat too much and laugh even more. And then it was over, with dad back at work and turkey sandwiches for an entire week. It was perfection. It’s repetition as special as the Queen’s Speech and the school nativity. But not this year.

This year our family is not going to be together for Christmas Day as we travel to far flung corners of the world. But no matter, we had our Christmas Day last Saturday. And all those traditions came rolling out as the years rolled away and new but familiar memories were made again. The handmade decorations proudly produced by the grandchildren were the centrepiece and I smiled to think my sister in law still has the little wire Christmas tree brought out by mum for more than 50 years even after dad died.

The turkey was from an old fashioned turkey farm. I made the prawn cocktails using mum’s not so secret but delicious prawn cocktail sauce. Yes we had sprouts. (this time with chestnuts). Yes we had the best cranberry sauce homemade by my daughter’s mother in law to her mum’s recipe and yes we had wine. But it was just how it should have been and just how it always was albeit 20 days early.

But of course the best ingredients were the only ones I haven’t mentioned. And whatever the fayre, the absolute icing on the cake with a cherry on top, then as now, family and friends, laughter and joy and above all the children, one soon to be ten worrying about whether Santa is real but as we warned her don’t be surprised if you get nothing at all, and the others full of the letters they had written and whether he would even know what Laboubou’s were.

Christmas Day will be very different this year. I will tell you about it when it happens. But it’s perfectly fine. It is good to try new things even if we gravitate towards the past. I will have one miles and miles away again with people I care for and it will be different but equally as wonderful. However our early celebrations were as they have always been, right down to the After Eights and the cheese that nobody ate or the Christmas cake we didn’t cut into because we were all too full.

As you plan yours I wish you love and joy. We all know family and love isn’t just for Christmas. If you are lucky enough to to surround yourself with both in life we all know know it is something to celebrate each and every day of the year.