AFTER the long lead-up to Christmas, it can feel like the big day passes you by in the blink of an eye.
This rings especially true if you are in charge of the festive feast, which can soak up hours of valuable relaxing time.
Host of the Girls Overheard podcast, Ash Reid, blew away her co-presenters Lauren Fairbairn and Eilidh Wells with a friend’s clever hack for making the most of the day – saying she “may actually have fixed the whole blueprint for Christmas“.
Ash told the girls: “She has her Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve.
“And then see on Christmas Day?
“They get up in the morning, do all their presents, have nice bacon rolls, and then it gets to about three or four and they go ‘we’ve got all of our Christmas dinner still’.
“So she has no stress on Christmas day because she’s made her turkey, she’s made her ham, they have loads of roast potatoes, and it’s no stress.”
Gobsmacked by the thought, Ash asked her co-presenters: “Is that not the best thing ever?!”
Eilidh replied: “I love this!”
The idea of preparing and serving your main festive meal on Christmas Eve is well-rooted in other Western countries, but almost unheard of in the United Kingdom.
Poland, for example, eat their “Wigilia” supper on Christmas Eve, a meal which typically consists of 12 servings and includes fish, mushrooms, and gingerbread.
The Czech Republic also eats their festive meal on December 24 – usually consisting of fish soup, fried carp, and potato salad.
Scandinavia also focuses their festive celebrations the day before Christmas, sitting down to enjoy roast meat, potatoes, red cabbage, and gravy, alongside pickled and fermented vegetables.
But the United Kingdom doesn’t share the tradition, instead keeping our Christmas dinner to the December 25.
And viewers of the Girls Overheard clip were divided, with one writing: “Done it for years. Cook the turkey before Christmas and prepare all the veg/gravy on Christmas Eve.
“Just a case of heating it up and eating.
“Too many years watch my mum miss out on Christmas day growing up.”
Another person wrote: “I’ve done this for years! It’s amazing, get to relax with the kids.”
And someone else joked: “I wouldn’t have anything left from Christmas Eve to eat on Christmas day, I’m a gannet!”
While another person wrote: “Been doing this for 6 years now, kids can do as they please and we can enjoy sitting with them and playing games without cooking a dinner.”
However, not everybody could see the positive side, with one user writing: “You’ve got the stress on Xmas eve though! Pointless.”
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