We never celebrated Christmas when I was a small child. So now I’m free to make my own festive traditions

One quirk of my life is that I never celebrated Christmas as a small child. I was in secondary school when I put it to the family that, rather than doing what we normally did (nothing, but a worse-than-usual nothing because TV sucked and everything was closed), we should take the opportunity for some state-sanctioned downtime and bond.

It wasn’t a hard sell (one thing I inherited from my mother is needing no excuse to party). The issue wasn’t religion or culture: it was scheduling. My siblings and I only had our mum growing up, and she worked in a shop; Christmas Eve and Boxing Day were major shopping days and on Christmas Day she was beat. So I promised to take care of everything.

Being 14, it was obviously an unmitigated disaster. I served prawns covered in ketchup and mayo in a mug (“Prawn cocktail,” I explained). I ruined my sister’s tights by cutting them up for stockings. I overloaded several extension cords with lights (the electrician was impressed: only true Christmasheads would have dinner by candlelight). It was probably quite tense, too, what with me shouting “Be jolly!” at anyone who dared to rest their face.

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In my family, Christmas remains “my” holiday. But I no longer feel the need to subscribe to a cookie-cutter version. This year, for the first time, I’ve delegated. Mum’s on food and encouraged to use spice; brother is on movies (the more chin-strokey the better); sister is soundtracking the day with rap; English boyfriend has no role other than to not look mortified.

My older cousin messaged me a millennial-goading joke: “This year will you be leaving Santa avocado toast?”

“Why not,” I replied. “It’s Christmas – we can do whatever we want.”