Christmas is all about traditions: repeating the same thing over and over, however silly it might be, because that’s just what you do at Christmas. But every time-honoured tradition has to start somewhere. In order to sell us tat we don’t need, and keep the PR industry ticking over, the holiday season has also become the time for all manner of daft fads, and celebs promising to give our favourite festive foods, games and pressies “a twist”. Not wanting to miss the (gravy) boat, I embarked on a spirited mission to try them all.
This year’s hotly touted Christmas trends include “burr baskets” – a care package of cosy items such as blankets and socks given as a pre-Christmas gift, which sounds like an unnecessary extra faff. Then there’s a lot of talk about “Thriftmas”: re-gifting and buying secondhand gifts from charity shops, which my friend and I havebeen doing for years. The best/worst such gift, from me to him, was probably an unofficial version of Guess Who? with most of the pieces missing. And from him to me: a used chocolate Advent calendar, with all the chocolate scoffed. Also on trend in the world of gifts this year is burgundy wrapping paper, although I say: what’s wrong with tinfoil, like in Gavin and Stacey?
Victoria Beckham, meanwhile, has gone viral with her “near naked” Christmas tree, where you buy a Christmas tree, plonk it in the corner, and then – wasting no time on broken baubles or tangled fairy lights – don’t bother decorating it. Or, in the case of Beckham, pay swanky interior designer Rose Uniacke to not decorate it for you.
When she’s not eating pasta in bed, Nigella Lawson has broken the mould again, decorating her tree with bacon, albeit inedible bacon ornaments. In honour of Nigella’s 2024 Christmas Greggs advert, I decorate my Christmas yucca (hey, it’s Thriftmas, right?) with Greggs sausage rolls, which sit in the leaves like warm, greasy presents, too heavy to tie on. Thinking fast, I return from the shops with the perfect bacon-flavoured bauble replacement: a multipack of Frazzles. I award myself 4/5 for ingenuity.
This year, 25% of people will air fry at least some of their Christmas dinner. Tragically, Iceland’s £25 Luxury Christmas Dinner for Four is so popular it has sold out, prohibiting me from attempting to air fry a turkey joint wrapped in bacon, beef dripping roast potatoes, honey roast parsnips, brussels sprouts with bacon, carrot baubles with parsley and chive butter, 12 pigs in blankets and gravy, all in one go. Probably for the best, as I still have no idea how air fryers work. Growing up, my mum refused to have a microwave, for fear of contracting radiation poisoning. I now have a similar worry that I’ll somehow accidentally air fry myself to death.
Elsewhere, I learn that 78% of gen Z say they would like to eat something plant-based or otherwise non-traditional for their Christmas dinner, while 67% say it should be “Instagram worthy”. After a three-hour, nine-mile round trip to my local Ikea to try its “festive plantball feast” (an alternative to the famous meatballs), I’m told the Christmas menu has been discontinued at this branch since mid-December. Instead, I settle for the regular veggie balls, served with quinoa and tomato and spinach ragout, to which I award 2/5 out of sheer festive disappointment. It is some consolation that an Instagram post of me looking lonely, meatbally, but ultimately Christmassy, gets several likes.
Also this Christmas, watch out for Cliff Richard, or, more precisely, watch out for his rogue recipe for “the greatest gravy in the world”, which – with no mention of roasted vegetables, stock, or pan juices – has been described as “absolutely vile”. The Mistletoe and Wine singer’s “secret”? Four different stock cubes, chopped fried onions, and a myriad of unorthodox condiments, including Worcestershire sauce, teriyaki and soy. Saucy.
Apparently a third of us will enjoy at least three Christmas dinners this year. This seems like child’s play. I once ate 12 Christmas dinners in 12 days for this very newspaper. It’s normally this time of year that the Guardian’s Stuart Heritage is deep frying an entire Christmas dinner or eating so many mince pies he loses the will to live. So surely it’s absolutely, definitely, totally worth a 120-mile, five-hour round trip so I can force him to guest-review 2024’s must have TikTok Christmas dinner accessory: glitter gravy, where you add sparkly edible glitter to the Bisto? Indeed it was – although my esteemed dining companion’s review was not exactly glowing:
In 2017, Melania Trump graced the cover of Mexican Vanity Fair, twirling a diamond necklace on a fork like it was a string of spaghetti. In many ways, by allowing Pelley to tip his silver-coated chocolate balls into my jug of gravy to the palpable disgust of the serving staff at my local Harvester, I have achieved a similar level of glamorous ostentation. Two main takeaways. First, making gravy look pretty by adding shiny things to it is abjectly stupid, and anyone doing so of their own volition should be violently punished. Second, definitely don’t do it with silver chocolate balls, because the heat of the gravy will melt the balls and the resulting mess will strongly resemble rabbit diarrhoea. 0/5.
For me, Christmas is all about honouring the family traditions you remember from your childhood, and ultimately passing them on to your own children. Can I see any of these novelty fads becoming annual Pelley traditions? No. Although I am very much looking forward to my new tradition of taking Stuart Heritage out for Christmas dinner, where next year I plan to poison him with actual glitter.
