The turkey is basting, the veggies are prepped and the plant-based mulch is defrosting for the vegans.
Soon, your extended family will arrive, their journeys so far unblighted by any mishaps, judging by the 67 WhatsApp messages giving you a blow-by-blow account of their progress. What can possibly go wrong?
Four hours later, it transpires that the answer is ‘quite a lot’. For while there was no disaster so great that Christmas was cancelled, you – the hapless hostess – most definitely have been.
Your only consolation is that you’re not alone. Also on the naughty step are your husband, your mother-in-law and poor Uncle Bert, whose ‘crime’ was to call his 19-year-old grand-niece ‘a cracker’, as the pair of them pulled one.
Apparently this is sexist, and your defence of Uncle Bert – ‘He meant it as a compliment!’ – has been taken as evidence of your own distinctly unwoke credentials.
In today’s strict court of public opinion, when it comes to actually expressing one, you really cannot be careful enough.
Wherever generations come together, the prospect of ‘cancelling’ – when a person believed to have done or said something inappropriate is shunned or boycotted – comes, too. Which makes Christmas an especially risky time.
Forget prepping the dinner, this year my advice is to spend at least an hour on prepping an exclusion list of topics that must remain strictly off-limits.
Wherever generations come together, the prospect of ‘cancelling’ – when a person believed to have done or said something inappropriate is shunned or boycotted – comes, too
Fifty years ago, it was simply a case of ‘don’t mention the war’. In 2024, the list of verboten subjects extends to politics, gender, immigration, climate change, taxation, mental health, wages and the John Lewis Christmas ad.
Everything is a potential source of offence: the prawns in the prawn cocktail starter, which are almost certainly not sustainably sourced enough for your environmentalist cousin; those wretched crackers, symbols not of festive cheer but of rainforest destruction on account of the plastic toys and paper hats therein.
One friend of mine said it started last year at the very front door, when her 17-year-old nephew hotly objected to the Ring doorbell as an invasion of privacy. ‘What do you plan to do with the video recordings?’
Could your turkey get you cancelled? Unless it’s a blessedly free-range KellyBronze costing the same as a small family saloon, you could be in trouble. Obviously, you’ve bought a vegetarian option – something called a Tofurkey, which you hope tastes better than it looks.
Have you got time to get a bigger oven? Rearrange the cooking schedule now so that the veggie pigs-in-blankets can be cooked separately from the meat ones. Likewise, keep the roasties done in goose fat well away from their soggy olive oil-drenched cousins. Remember when Emily spat out the ‘wrong one’ last year in a really quite theatrical gesture of distaste?
At lunch itself, you will need to be on your toes. Should you decide to have music on in the background, be ready to jump up as soon as you hear the opening bars of Fairytale Of New York, in case it’s the uncensored version.
Of course, much like the Boxing Day lunch, some conversations get overheated. Gregg Wallace, you know not to mention already, but you’ve a sneaking suspicion your aunt has an irrational hatred of poor Dawn French and your mother loves that M&S ad.
Be especially vigilant at that point in the afternoon when everyone retires, tipsy and exhausted, into the living room. This is when tensions run high and cancellation is easily triggered.
Laura Craik gives her top tips on how to NOT get cancelled this Christmas
When choosing which Christmas film to watch, the teens will go one way and the elders another – and everyone will have an opinion. The Santa Clause? Sizeist. The Holiday? Sexist. Jingle All The Way? Capitalist. Love, Actually? Problematic, actually. Shall we all play charades instead?
Clearly, charades is a silly idea. Uncle Billy can barely stand up, Granny Eileen will have lost her hearing aid and no one under 20 will have a clue how to play a game that doesn’t involve a screen.
Even the washing-up is fraught. You might think an escape to the kitchen allows a rest from all the walking on eggshells but, no, even here you’re not safe. A plastic pot scourer? You’re destroying all aquatic life! You should have bought one made of vulcanised kale for £199.99!
My best tip of all? Get stuck into the chocolate Baileys (who knows if the cream in it is organic and, frankly, who cares) and switch on Gavin & Stacey. Before someone tries to cancel James Corden for something he said in 1999, turn up the volume so loud even Granny Eileen can hear.
Familial harmony will briefly reign and the teens might even look up from their phones. Let all thoughts of cancellation drift away with Uncle Bert’s increasingly loud snores, and peace and goodwill will prevail at least until Boxing Day…provided nobody opens their mouth.
