We usually spend Christmas Day at my parents' farm in Taranaki. The day starts with waffles and fresh berries we always get from Piopio with lashings of cream. Because of the excitement, the present opening happens before any eating, which is really saying something given our love of food.
When it comes to the presents, there's usually one "main" gift and a few little ones. We like to make the quest for the big present an adventure, a treasure hunt, or you might have to be blindfolded before seeing the box.
The big meal of the day is a roast lunch with extended family. We'll have a glazed ham and roast turkey with roasted veges, lashings of homemade gravy and bubbles. Dessert is always pavlova and steamed pudding. My mum makes us all wear some form of headwear at the table - last year we had a choice of reindeer antlers, Santa hats or an angel halo.
There's grazing on chocolates from the stockings throughout the afternoon, a wee nap and if we're not too bloated a bit of backyard cricket, then back into it all for dinner again, usually with a meat we haven't eaten for lunch.
Each year we say we've always got way too much food but I'm super into canapes this year, so I'm going to try to squeeze them in somewhere. As I'm pregnant I can't drink the bubbles so have decided that's my prerogative.
Anthony Hoy Fong
New York-based celebrity chef who has cooked for Barack Obama
Since moving to the US 10 years ago, I typically celebrate Christmas with my wife's family in Michigan. It's a classic, all-American, snowy, white Christmas affair - a complete 180 from the summer barbies, touch rugby games and beach trips I grew up with in Auckland.
This year, we're celebrating in New York as we're expecting our first baby. My mum and dad have arrived from New Zealand and it's been fun starting a new set of holiday traditions, like picking out a live tree from the corner stand and dragging it up the street in the snow back to the house.
This year we're hosting Christmas Eve dinner. Since we'll have a newborn, I'm keeping it simple, doing less, better and focusing on a few key dishes that anchor the menu and feed a lot of people: a brown sugar and apricot glazed leg of ham; a creamy potato gratin with nutmeg, garlic and Gruyere cheese; a roasted acorn squash and arugula salad with shaved pecorino and candied walnuts.
We'll chocolate-dip strawberries, blueberries and dried fruit for dessert, one of my favorite family traditions as we do it all together.
In the morning, we'll go pretty low-key with pan-fried leftover ham, soft scrambled eggs, and banana brioche French toast.
Then we'll bake and decorate shortbread to take to dinner at my brother-in-law's.
My wife lovingly refers to how we do pressies in my family as the "Hoy Fong present melee".
Her family opens gifts ceremoniously, one person at a time, but we divvy up all the gifts then we all just go for it, simultaneously. It's a lot of excitement and shouting out all at once.
Lizzie Marvelly
Singer/songwriter
Christmas is undoubtedly my favourite time of the year. My friends and family all groan when it rolls around, because I start celebrating in September, playing Christmas carols on repeat. There's just something about a time of year that is unashamedly about joy, giving and celebration that really does it for me. I'm told I'm insufferable.
I usually head back to my family home in Rotorua around December 20 as the annual Marvelly Christmas party takes place the weekend before Christmas. It's quite a gathering of friends, family and neighbours. We open the doors in the mid-afternoon and generally the last stragglers stagger out somewhere around midnight.
Christmas Day usually starts with breakfast at home with my parents (I'm an only child) then a hilarious day of mother-daughter bonding in the kitchen over many glasses of wine. As my parents are hoteliers, business doesn't stop for Christmas Day, so dad usually spends the morning setting up Christmas lunch for the guests. We're all together in the afternoon though, and the rest of the family will join us for dinner this year, which will be a traditional affair because I'm such an annoying purist. My family has revolted this year though and demanded pavlova rather than trifle, so I'm outnumbered.
To be honest, I'm not so fussed about receiving presents. I love giving them, love wrapping them, all that jazz, but Christmas just makes me generally happy. This is going to sound sickening, but that's enough of a present for me.
Glen Fisiiahi
Warriors back
Christmas Day is big, really big, for us, especially with 11 siblings. I'm not sure how many people we have together at once but there are plenty. Apart from my mum and dad plus my immediate family and their partners there are my nieces, nephews and cousins as well as other family. It's always a cool day.
On the food side, the tradition is for everyone to bring a plate. We usually have a Christmas Day barbecue with a pig on the spit. When it's ready, we say a prayer then everyone is into the food. Sometimes it might be lunch, sometimes dinner. It depends on whether some of the partners have other places to go to as well. It's a majority vote on when we have it.
It's good having all the family together. It's not the time to be talking football, though. Rugby league runs in the family but we try to avoid discussing it on this one day of the year. There's a lot more to talk about.
The best part is presents time, of course. It's crazy with so many people together at the same time and so many presents to give out.
One of my brothers will play Santa and have one of my cousins as his elf. They'll call out people's names one by one to get their presents. We play a song as they get their presents, a Christmas song which might be Maori, Samoan, Tongan or whatever suits.
There's a bit of dancing as well. It's so cool seeing the kids' faces as they open their presents.
Afterwards it's a real mess with all the wrapping paper lying around everywhere but everyone has had a great day.
John Key
Prime Minister
For us Christmas is an occasion to get the family together and Bronagh and I are looking forward to spending some time with Max and Stephie. The best Christmases are the ones with the kids, especially so when they were younger, because children are just so in love with the day and everything it entails and seeing their faces on Christmas Day is something all parents treasure.
I've told them all I want from them this year is a bit more respect, but I'm not holding my breath!
Before I became prime minister we always used to go to Christchurch where my sisters live to have a big family Christmas. All of our various family members would come and we would have turkey and crayfish. In recent years we've travelled overseas for Christmas so that hasn't been possible.
We do still always have a big Christmas lunch and we're inevitably forced to go for a waddle afterwards to burn some of it off. We always sit around and open our presents together. This year we're spending Christmas at home before heading to Los Angeles and Hawaii after what has been a very busy year.
Sir Peter Leitch
The Mad Butcher
For me, Christmas is a special time. I was one of seven children raised in Wellington's Newtown and, while we didn't have much, we did have a house full of love. So Christmas remains a time of family. I love having my daughters and a house full of grandchildren.
There is a magic you don't experience at any other time of the year, the looks of delight when they open their presents and the excitement in their eyes when they give you gifts, often things they have made at school and they are desperate for you to like.
Making gifts is special, because when I was a boy, my father made me a toy rifle. I was so proud of that rifle, and that my dad had made it just for me, so even now it is the gift I am taken back to. I remember myself getting that hand-made toy, the joy I felt, and the look of satisfaction and pride on my dad's face.
Nowadays, of course, it is more about computer games than using your imagination to round up runaway baddies in the green belt that surrounded the houses around Newtown.
This year we will be having a Waiheke Island Christmas and we'll tuck into a ham on the bone. Lady Janice is a dab hand in the roasting department and there is always the full Kiwi experience, with succulent lamb, a bit of turkey, lashings of roast veg with gravy - superb.
I also take the time to think of my friends and family who have passed on, plus I ring someone, often someone I have not spoken to in a while and who is perhaps not as fortunate as me. It reminds me that it's easy to include someone in your thoughts and take the time to ring them on this special day.
Chelsea Winter
Celebrity cook
If you're a Grinchy, non-Christmas person you'd best not read on, because I'm a walking-talking version of Christmas cheer. I love it. Christmas trees twinkling with festive glory over piles of gifts. Champagne and juicy strawberries on Christmas morning. Christmas carols - I start singing them loudly from late November, much to my husband's dismay.
And yes, crackers. It doesn't matter if they're the lavishly expensive kind or the dirt-cheap ones from the supermarket filled with tiny and useless plastic choking hazards because it's the terrible, so-bad-they're-good jokes lurking within that make my Christmas bright - along with the party hats which I force everyone to wear.
"The present game" is meant to be a friendly sort of lark but really it's a brutal affair where invariably, one disgruntled loser cops the booby prize - a lone potato in a box was one of the more memorable ones.
Then, of course, there's the food. Homemade brioche for breakfast then free-range ham smothered in my maple and cranberry glaze. Crunchy duck fat potatoes are a must. A few salads and either salmon, lamb or turkey. For dessert I'm making the fail-proof pavlova from my new cookbook Everyday Delicious, loaded with cream and fresh berries. Then we all eat too much, lie around like slugs and chatter away, while the kids test out their Christmas loot.
But really, the most important part of Christmas is having my family together. This year we're at dad's at Mt Maunganui, and the next two years will be mum's in Cambridge and Mike's parents in Auckland.
We have a rota system so everyone gets a turn, because zig-zagging across the country on Christmas Day seems silly. I much prefer to settle in with a glass of bubbles, a massive plate of food, people I love and listen to Fairytale of New York on the stereo. Merry Christmas, everyone.
Nathan Friend
Warriors hooker
From the time I was two, my parents have gone to Hervey Bay, about three hours by road north of Brisbane, where we set up camp on the water's edge. The coastline is sheltered by Fraser Island, making it ideal for children to swim unless a northerly happens to come through; then you have the chance to get the body board out.
Seafood is our staple diet. Along with the fish we catch, Dad will put the crab pots in and he usually catches a couple each trip to keep Mum happy.
At the same time Mum goes crazy with the baking and she'll have ice cream containers full of jam drop biscuits, Anzac biscuits, Christmas pudding and my favourite trifle.
As I reached my 20s, presents became a little too hard to buy. I guess I had everything I required so Mum would give me PJs without fail.
Obviously Christmas takes on a totally new perspective when you have your own kids. Each passing year Kelly and I have more fun watching our boys Oliver and Axel enjoying what it's all about. It's the special part of being parents.
Last year we broke with our usual tradition by having Christmas in New Zealand. We loved it but going to Hervey Bay is the way I always remember this time of the year.
