Christmas

Were there arguments? Undoubtedly. By the time Christmas Eve arrived, it was a dead cert that Great Aunt Mary would prefer BBC Two’s festive celebration from Westminster Cathedral (complete with the puberty-defying nearly-15-year-old Anglesey treble Aled Jones) to Kenny Everett’s reworking of A Christmas Carol on BBC One (louche, anarchic and probably regrettable, with its jokes about a pudding with cystitis and pantomime-style wordplay of the ‘Good golly, Miss Marley?’ variety). And it was 1985, so only 30 per cent of British homes owned a video recorder, making the ‘what to watch’ argument notably fraught in the season of peace and goodwill toward men. The problem with anticipation is the element of waiting. How long is it since patience was a virtue?

‘It was a Turkey! He never could have stood upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped ’em short off in a minute, like sticks of sealing-wax.’ (A Christmas Carol.) And there is exactly the problem with festive fowl. In most cases, we get turkey. And usually we get it far too big, which leads to all the problems of using the thing up over the course of a week. It may have been fine for Bob Cratchit’s large family but for most people, the mammoth turkey isn’t the way to go. A turkey is a fine bird (one of the trinity of actually useful things, with potatoes and tomatoes, to come out of the European discovery of America) – but it’s not the only option.

Stir-up Sunday may be behind us, but it’s not too late to make your Christmas pudding – and do you know what that means? Yep, sourcing decent beef suet. Suet is the king of fats. It adds to the pudding’s keeping quality, texture and flavour. My recipe calls for half a pound of suet (see below for the recipe in full – it was my great-aunt’s) but the good stuff is hard to find. You can get pellets of suet in a packet from supermarkets, but the real thing, grated into light flakes, is another story: much nicer and lighter. Some inferior recipes suggest butter instead, but good as butter is, it just doesn’t cut it for a Christmas pudding. Suet is the hard creamy fat around the beef kidney.

You just can’t beat London at Christmas. Unless you’re lining up to get into the Tube station (never mind onto a train) at Oxford Circus, in the pissing rain. Then you’re better off in one of those glass igloos in Finland.  When I’m in town for the holidays, I find myself returning to a few old faithfuls, with a few old faithfuls. The Zetter Marylebone Keep this gem up your sleeve for when the crowds become a little too much. A warren of sumptuous suites and a lavish, candlelit parlor awaits at dinky Zetter Marylebone hotel, just a couple of streets back from shopping mecca Selfridges. Divide and conquer last-minute shopping with Mom, then meet here at lunchtime for a swift recovery.