Turkey

featured on their 2010 Christmas Card and they were pictured welcoming the Olympic Torch in 2012.

In 2015, they opted for a photo of themselves returning to Downing Street after seeing the Queen to form a new government.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister

Theresa May chose drawings by schoolchildren from her Maidenhead constituency for her 2016 festive cards.

John Major was urging people to buy charity Christmas cards in 1996 while, the following year, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott put on an apron and went underneath the arches to cook for people sleeping on the street in London. The Christmas refuge was set up at the basement of the Admiralty Arch in the capital.

It’s a time-honoured tradition that a turkey has been presented to the prime minister by the British Turkey Federation since the days of Winston Churchill.

The British war-time Prime Minister actually left Downing Street to visit American President Roosevelt in Washington for Christmas in 1941 following the attack on Pearl

Harbour.

Rationing had not yet reached the White House and the festive fare included oysters, clear soup with sherry, roast turkey with chestnut dressing and cranberry jelly and a dessert of plum pudding, ice cream, salted nuts, bonbons and coffee.

Churchill wore a dressing gown when he was photographed a few years later with his guests in Carthage after an informal luncheon party on

Christmas Day 1943 to celebrate his recovery from a severe case of pneumonia.

The gathering included a number of Allied chiefs of staff such as General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander of the British and US Expeditionary Forces in the UK for the liberation of Europe.

Churchill himself once observed: “Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.”