As December marches on, a familiar question arises in households across the country: where should we have Christmas dinner? The temptation to outsource the entire production to a restaurant or pub is powerful. After all, the modern festive meal is portrayed not as a simple feast, but as a culinary Olympics requiring specialist equipment, obscure ingredients, and military-level planning. Who wouldn’t want to pass that baton to a professional kitchen?
The promise is alluring. A local establishment offers the full traditional spread—turkey, trimmings, a cracker, and a festive drink—for a set price per person. It sounds like liberation from the tyranny of timings, the mountain of washing-up, and the stress of ensuring the roast potatoes are perfect.
Yet, having ventured down this path myself on several occasions, I find the reality often falls short of the fantasy. While you may escape cooking, you simply inherit a new set of responsibilities: the logistics of transporting the entire family, accommodating Auntie’s insistence on being home for the King’s speech, and managing the dietary complexities of the vegan cousin, the fussy teen, and everyone in between.
My own experiences have been mixed. One year, a cosy pub lunch in the countryside delivered on atmosphere but faltered on the food, with lacklustre vegetables and a gravy shortage. The staff’s thinly-veiled resentment at working on the day was palpable, a reminder that those serving your meal likely wish they were elsewhere. Another year, an exorbitantly priced hotel lunch traded festive warmth for sterile luxury, with a marathon tasting menu that left us stranded in post-meal traffic instead of relaxing at home.
This annual indecision has led me to a surprising conclusion. Despite the complaints about the chaos, the conflicting requests for beef alternatives and gold-leaf desserts, and the sheer exhaustion of it all, there is a unique satisfaction in presiding over the domestic kitchen on December 25th. It is in that moment of controlled pandemonium, surrounded by steaming pans and the chatter of loved ones, that the tradition feels most authentic. It’s a tangible, if messy, act of care—a connection to the generations who have done the same.
So, while the appeal of a booked table remains, there’s an undeniable pull to stay put. You can pay someone else to handle the sprouts and spare yourself the stress, but you might just miss the heartfelt, chaotic, and deeply personal triumph of getting it done yourself.