A peek into the Hawke’s Bay Today’s Christmas Day

Father Christmas is nearly ready to roll.

In just eight more sleeps, it will be Christmas morning.

I was thinking about how people celebrate the day in so many different ways.

Some families have traditions going back generations - others adopt their partner’s traditions, and some people start new traditions when they have their own children.

I spend a lot of time with my colleagues, especially the ones in the same office as me. Every year, we have a Christmas celebration involving food and, usually, Secret Santa presents.

But we don’t spend Christmas Day together.

This year, I thought I’d find out a bit more about how they celebrate the day.

I asked them the following questions:

1. What do you like the most about Christmas Day?
2. What’s your favourite family tradition?
3. What’s the best Christmas present you have ever received?
4. And the worst?
5. What is the first Christmas you remember?
6. What’s going to be on your lunch table this year?
7. What’s your favourite Christmas song?
8. And your least favourite?
9. Tell us a Christmas cracker joke.

Here are their answers:

KEM

1. Our lives are so hectic, it is a nice time to catch up with family and friends.

2. A beautifully decorated tree and house. Coffee martinis for breakfast always go down well.

3. A trip to the Christmas markets in Germany that my brother organised.

4. An exercise ball and a yoga video.

5. A Christmas stocking at the end of my bed and a new bike.

6. All the traditional trimmings, this year.

7. Snoopy’s Christmas.

8. I love them all - the good, the bad, and the ugly!

9. I make my own crackers, and can’t possibly divulge the terrible jokes I add.

JAMES

1. Eating good food with lots of visiting family.

2. We don’t really have traditions outside the usual, really! Probably just swapping the family who gets to host Christmas each year, I suppose.

3. Mum and Dad paid for a stay at a bach in Coromandel for a week in the summer where we spent time together as a family one year as a gift for my sister and myself. That was pretty nice.

4. Probably a pack of undies. Nothing wrong with it, just boring.

5. I think it was when I was about four years old, I remember the tree going up and being in my PJs early in the morning to open up my presents.

6. I’m not sure, but it will probably be something fresh off the barbecue grill top - sausages, lamb chops, kebabs. Plus the desserts like trifle, ambrosia and more.

7. Snoopy’s Christmas.

8. Call me a Grinch, but I mostly despise Christmas songs, so nearly all of the rest of them. All I Want For Christmas Is You is probably at the top.

9. Did you hear they have cars that run on parsley now? Next I hear they are going to make trains that run on thyme.

What's the best Christmas present you have ever had?

ALISON - who is the world’s biggest Cliff Richard fan

1. Wearing my Santa shirt and hat and looking a right dork.

2. Cherry stone spitting competition.

3. Cliff Richard Christmas CD. Everyone loved it playing over and over and over again all day.

4. New catcher for the lawnmower - I don’t mow the lawns.

5. When I was young, my father, a cop, brought home a Russian seaman who had jumped ship in Napier and turned up at the police station in Taupō on Xmas Eve - he spent Xmas Day with us.

6. Anything I don’t have to cook - the oven and I do not bond.

7. Mistletoe and Wine by my Cliffy.

8. Anything sung by Tom Jones.

9. Who automatically gets added to Santa’s nice list? Anyone who cleans their chimney.

LARISSA

1. Everything is closed, so I don’t need to go to the shop.

2. Christmas Eve dinner, we go all-out with the ham, lamb leg roast, mashed veggies and roast potatoes. And a Christmas baked pudding.

3. My Pandora bracelet.

4. Nothing - one year, I received nothing.

5. I was four and I got a Cabbage Patch Kid.

6. Leftover ham and lamb with salads and buns.

7. The Little Drummer Boy.

8. Snoopy’s Christmas.

9. Where do Santa’s reindeer stop for coffee? Star-bucks!

LEANNE

1. Lunch. We’re not big on Christmas these days.

2. We didn’t really have a tradition, but when I was a kid, I used to love having the job of decorating the Christmas tree.

3. Hmm, it’s a toss-up between a doll and a wooden doll’s wardrobe. The doll’s name was Heidi. The wardrobe was for Barbie doll clothes, and a family friend built it for me.

4. A Secret Santa gift of a plastic fan.

5. I think it might be when I was five. We’d moved into a brand-new state house just two months earlier. It still had that new smell.

6. Roast lamb with mint sauce, and pav for dessert.

7. Snoopy’s Christmas.

8. All I Want for Christmas Is You (Mariah Carey).

9. What’s the difference between a snowman and a snow-woman? Snowballs.

SHIRLEY

1. Being with the family.

2. Family photos on Christmas morning, always taken in the same spot in the courtyard (and then we look at the previous years!).

3. In the 90s, when my son knocked on the door and surprised me - came home from Australia!

4. Haven’t had one - yet.

5. Maybe six or seven - Dad going to cut down a Christmas tree!

6. Glazed ham, rolled stuffed chicken, seafood, including crayfish, potato bake, a variety of salads, boil-up (everyone’s fave), chocolate mousse, meringues, fresh fruit salad, icecream - and then whatever else the family brings!

7. Away in a Manger (as a child I always had to sing it for the grown ups!).

8. I don’t have one - they all make you nostalgic.

9. Why does Santa have three gardens? So he can HO HO HO!

OLIVIA

1: The food and drinks.

2: Glazed ham.

3: A beautiful dollhouse when I was little.

4: A pair of socks.

5: Not sure.

6: Ham, roast beef, chicken and salads. Plus I’m doing starters, so baked Brie!!

7: I want a hippopotamus for Christmas.

8: Michael Bublé's whole Christmas album.

9: What do you get when you eat Christmas decorations? Tinselitis!

And finally, the office GRINCH

I’m one of the few that really dislikes Christmas, so I hide myself away on the day and enjoy my own company and the pleasure of doing as much or little as I like. I shall have smoked salmon and scrambled eggs for breakfast and prawns for lunch. Oh, and lashings of pinot gris.

I think we should be kind to everyone 12 months of the year and remember that Christmas is a Christian festival.

Footnote: Merry Christmas and Happy New year everyone. This is the last Essence for 2022. We will be back on January 14, 2023.