Turns out no matter how long you have known them, one of the questions people always ask at this time of year is but what are YOU going to eat for Christmas, as if being a vegetarian somehow excludes you from the Winter feast, or from building up a tradition.

The answer is always the same: juts what you will have except for the dead animal.

We have a porcini, chestnut pie with a cranberry glaze as the centre piece, but all the trimmings are much the same as any other family i.e. roast potatoes (using a combination of olive oil and sunflower) brussels sprouts with chestnuts. carrots, parsnips, sage and onion stuffing. We have bread sauce, cranberry sauce and, this year, an onion gravy.

Even so, each year the tradition changes ever so slightly. Turns out there is always something I didn’t know , that out of politeness (seems unlikely given my family) or changing tastes they all have waited until this year to share.

Turns out no one actually likes chestnuts.

Turns out that 2.5kilos of roast potatoes is about the limit for a family of four.

Turns out 300g brussel sprouts is much too few for our family of four.

Turns out onion gravy really is a treat with the porcini pie, much better than the mushroom gravy.

Turns out that pureed parsnip with a very large parmesan crumb is just what the grown ups want but not the kids, though since they don’t actually eat the parsnips anyway, they probably shouldn’t have a vote.

And pancakes really are the best Christmas breakfast. They just needed a bucks fizz or two to make sense.

The only unanswered question is whether church at 8am actually works better than the 10:30am matins. It should be straightforward but my favourite ex-church warden was so speedy with her responses that the whole service felt like a race through to the end which did for an kind of religious serenity.