Even if I’m crap at Christmas, if it ends with a hug, that’s perfect

Ah, Christmas. So special. So fun. So magical. Well, that’s what I thought,  as a little girl growing up on the west coast of Ireland. My mother would try to stave off sunlight deficiency disorder for us all by preloading Christmas on 1 November.

There were two reasons for this. The first is that winter in Ireland is the most depressing place on Earth. You can count the hours of daylight on one hand, the rain is relentless and it’s bone-chillingly cold but not actually cold enough for snow. That’s Ireland for you: neutral, even when it comes to the weather.

The second reason Christmas arrived so early was because my mum had a unique combination of talents: she was a garden designer, an exceptional cook and was “crafty”. She would hone these talents throughout the year until they reached peak elf status and Christmas would explode in our home like a confetti bomb. Except there was no confetti because she also had taste.

We’re talking handmade wreaths from “a few things I found in the garden”, a lighting design that would shame Fifth Avenue and a variety of pots bubbling on the stove emitting aromas most commonly found in a fancy French brasserie.

I inherited none of these talents. None. She bought me a book when I left home called How to Boil an Egg and I’m still working through it 20 years later. And foliage? I’m like the Grim Reaper to plants.

It never occurred to me that I would ever truly need to learn these things. The elf-in-chief was, after all, only a Facetime call away. And then… she died. DIED! Leaving me heartbroken but more importantly, for the purposes of this article, alone staring down the barrel of Christmas Future with the assumed mandate as the new matriarch to “create the magic of Christmas”.

I tried. I really did. But after the “Christmas incident of 2021” I’m not even allowed to wrap presents. (It’s a long story but suffice to say the emergency room did not feel paper cuts were high on the triage scale.)

I convinced myself the reason I wasn’t a good cook was that it just didn’t seem worth it to cook for four, so last year I invited 25 people to lunch, invoking that old chestnut: “the more, the merrier”. It quite literally ended with me on the couch in tears declaring to my long-suffering husband the truth he’d known all along: I’m crap at Christmas.

Acceptance is the first step. Defeat, however, I’m not willing to dance with. It occurred to me — sometime on Black Friday as I panic-bought enough fairy lights to get Kusile power station back up and running — that I could lean on the experts, and reached out to Tony Jackman, Daily Maverick’s food editor, with a plea for a recipe for the most culinary-challenged person he can think of. He provided two. May the Christmas elves bless this man for many years to come.

So, that was the food sorted. Now the decor. I’ve spent many weeks reading decor articles (they’re exquisitely boring) and discussing this with interior designers so you don’t have to. Here are my learnings:

Creating a Christmas atmosphere needs to hit all the senses: visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and tactile. Tony is taking care of the gustatory, so we can move on…

Visual

What comes up when you type ‘hygge’ into an Unsplash search. (Photo: Nav Rashmi Kalsi on Unsplash)

(Photo: 12019 on Pixabay)

(Photo: Kateřina Kyslingová from Pixabay)

• 30 baby potatoes


• 4 spring onions


• 1 green pepper


• 1 red pepper


• 1/2 cup flaked almonds


• 2 Tbsp capers, drained


• 4 preserved green figs


• 3 Tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley


• 3 heaped Tbsp wholegrain mustard


• 4 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil


• Juice and zest of 1 lemon


• 1 tsp smoked paprika


• 2 Tbsp caper brine (the liquid in the capers jar)


• 2 Tbsp of the syrup from the jar of preserved green figs


• Salt and black pepper to taste


• Edible flowers

(Photo: Louis Pieterse)