“I don’t mind what time presents are opened, but I do care about the food”: What happens when two Christmas dinners become one?

My earliest conception of a perfect Christmas came to an abrupt end when I was six and my parents divorced. We stopped spending it at my grandparents’ place and I wept at what I’d miss: playing with my cousins, setting traps for Santa – but most of all my grandma’s food. How could Christmas be as good without her cooking?

From then, I realised my fixed idea of Christmas was a fallacy. Like my family, the festival would have to evolve – a lesson that’s prepared me well for spending it with in-laws or with a partner.

After all the different Christmases – at Mum’s, at Dad’s, even with parents and step-parents all together – I’m not wedded to many traditions. I don’t mind what time presents are opened, what games are played – or whether the Christmas walk involves kicking a rugby ball across a lake, as it must in my boyfriend’s family.

What does matter to me, though, is the food. Because although the location, guest list and timetable of events have always changed, what we eat has remained surprisingly constant. My grandma still supplies the stuffing and pudding; Mum follows grandma’s roast potato recipe and we still have the breakfast grapefruit salad and kumquat condiment from my dad’s childhood. We cleave to these dishes wherever we are, whoever we’re with, because they connect us to the people who aren’t there that year.

Our family Christmas meal is a distillation of my family and their relationships. Step-parents have added to it but not taken away; and the way the meal now represents every part of our motley crew proves why it matters – and why couples needn’t fall out about it. Be it cheesy leeks or snowball cocktails you’re bringing to the table, they matter not so much for their taste as the people associated with them.

When a friend of mine spent her first Christmas with her partner, he lobbied for Christmas Eve gammon – a family tradition. She argued a gammon was too big for two but, having secured her own wish (Nigella’s muffins on Christmas morning), she compromised with ham hock gnocchi – “the perfect marriage”. She was talking about the food, of course, but it’s a good omen for a relationship when, through food, you can accept your independent histories, yet reflect the life you’re forging together.

Perhaps because his Christmas has stayed the same since childhood, my boyfriend doesn’t cling to food traditions. This bodes well for me and the Santa’s sack of recipes I’d bring were we ever to create our own Christmas. But if he decides he needs a particular dish, I like to think it would become part of my festive culinary canon as readily as kumquats did in my mother’s. Because while the perfect Christmas doesn’t exist, it comes close when it brings in everyone you love – in person, on a plate or via a rugby ball.

Discover the delicious. team’s all-time favourite Christmas recipes.