Home is where the heart is

I am hosting Christmas Day again this year! Yikes, I am not sure why I do it to myself, but here I am again (I never learn) organising a large festive gathering.

I do love Christmas at home, there is something quite reassuring about it. You can eat chocolate for breakfast, drink champagne before midday and tear open your presents and not save the paper. You don’t have to be anywhere, do anything or be chatty to anyone of you don’t want too. It is a day to enjoy just being in your own familiar environment, and stay in your pyjamas all day (except when you have people for lunch).

My family consists of parents, step parents, step brothers and sisters, half brothers and sisters, aunts and many cousins, nieces and nephews, all from varying genetic backgrounds that aren’t all linked to me biologically but I don’t care. They are all my family.

This wasn’t always the case, it has been awkward in the past getting all my family members together as I was conscious of not upsetting anyone. Particularly at this time of the year I don’t want to make waves, or insist that anyone had to sit next to someone they didn’t particularly like or invite a family member that had been estranged. I don’t want that whole catastrophe scene that you see on the nightly news happening at my house on December 25. God forbid, what would the neighbours think?

Whenever I plan a family get together I always want it to be perfect (not possible, but I try) I don’t spend any time thinking about themed menus, decorations, gifts and table napkins, I prefer to use the ones I got in the post-Christmas sales last year. They might be mismatched and possibly tatty and dog eared but I’m OK with that.

But I do scour magazines, cookbooks and those free publications you get at the supermarket for new recipes. I am heady with excitement when I see those magazines, I just love all those Christmassy foods, mince pies, Christmas cake, gingerbread, glazed hams, cherry pies, cocktails and spicy nuts, there are thousands of recipes and they all sound so enticing.

Whilst I would love to put my celebrity chef hat on, this is quite beyond me. I am not a bad cook but I am no fancy chef, far from it. I will have a red hot crack at a complicated recipe but somehow it never looks quite like the “one they prepared earlier”.

Your family care about seeing you on Christmas day not whether your paper is coordinated with matching ribbon, your food is fancy or you have stocked up on Christmas piñatas. It is all about family, seeing your loved ones across your dining room table, the reminiscing of years gone past, laughing out loud and telling stories. This is what Christmas is all about. Anyone who has been to our home knows that my Christmas day is about family, food and enjoying unhurried time together, it is such a wonderful time of the year.

It has been said that one of the best things in life is to stop and regularly devote time to eating, and in the company of family and friends, I couldn’t agree more.

Christmas is the time of year that home really is where the heart is ♥

Big Love Jane x