Christmas brunch
Sophie White takes the stress out of Christmas
We all have big expectations when it comes to Christmas. The pressure to create impossibly perfect, magical memories for our adorable little loin fruit is pretty big.
Invariably the little tykes won’t play the game, however; tantrums are as big a part of Christmas morning (and as nerve-jangling) as the Christmas songs on repeat. And it’s not just the children acting up — and, let’s face it, they have a pretty good excuse; they’re on a considerable developmental back foot compared with say, the adult contingent of the family. The adult family members can be every bit as helpless as the toddlers in the face of timing turkeys and fielding presents. More often than not, I’m in need of a mild sedative by the time the Kildare cousins arrive.
Christmas is the good kind of chaos, and if we didn’t have it, we would be bereft. I do feel, however, that too much focus is given over to the main event of the day, the dinner, and thus we neglect the previous nine hours during which, in my experience, we are most in need of soakage. This is, after all, when all the drunken fallouts and dredging up of past festive misdemeanors tend to take place.
Pre-prep is your pal
Children, family and friends are basically nothing more than a hindrance when it comes to keeping the Christmas show on the road. They will thwart our every effort to have the perfect, Instagram-worthy Christmas.
It starts early, when the pesky spawn wake, hourly, from 1am, to ask if it’s time to open the presents yet. I eventually relent, and let them get up at the more civilised hour of 5am. This will come to be a deeply regretted decision as it dawns on me that I now have to wait approximately four hours until it is deemed reasonable to consume the first alcoholic beverage of the day.
“The baby will love this adorable novelty Rudolph babygro,” I might then mistakenly think, while trying desperately to compose a lovely family photo. Wrong. In reality, the baby is not happy. The adorable novelty Rudolph babygro is, in fact, more like an adorable novelty Rudolph hairshirt, and the baby will not countenance keeping the thing on long enough for the bloody photo.
Himself is no better than the kids in the making-me-want-to-tear-my-own-faceoff-out-of-sheer-frustration stakes. His annual question: “What are we getting for my mother?” is never trotted out until at least 10am of a Christmas morning. Why does it take him this long to even begin to wonder if this aspect of the gifting is taken care of ? Similarly, he usually only thinks to “check” on the turkey status an hour before Christmas dinner.
I notice that I also always spend from December 20 to 25 being continuously questioned about the whereabouts of everything from Sellotape to wrapping paper, to Christmas lights to the tin of Roses. Time and again, I have tried to explain that I am not the keeper of all Christmas-related items — except probably the Roses, the location of which only I am privy to.
Spending Christmas with loved ones can be taxing on the soul, and many of us fall into the trap of surviving the day purely on adrenaline and low-grade rage directed at our relatives.
Dodge the festive hanger and inevitable sugar low by making an easy, prep-inadvance brunch menu that can be rolled out in tasty interludes throughout the day until Turkey Time hits.