The hours of Christmas Day, ranked
You already know exactly how it’s going to go, the same way it goes every year. We rank the highs and lows of every hour of Christmas Day from best to worst.
• 10am:You are being handed presents, in a very warm room, ideally while a modern animated movie is playing quietly in the background. The joy and the anticipation. You are a child again. It feels incredible.
• 8am: Your eyes bolt open. You lie cosy in your bed. ‘It’s Christmas Day!’ you whisper excitedly to yourself. You never outgrow that feeling. Untouchable.
• 5pm: You eat a roast the size of a dustbin lid. You eat a roast that could feed four of you. You pull crackers and tell jokes. You wear the little hat. The cabbage is shredded far better than you could have ever done it.
You eat a roast the size of a dustbin lid. You eat a roast that could feed four of you. You pull crackers and tell jokes. You wear the little hat.
• 2pm: You go to the pub for a pint. Drink Guinness and eat a handful of Celebrations left on the bar.
• 9pm: You are drunk and everyone is smiling. You are stood in the kitchen eating cheese. The lights in here are bright. You feel peace.
• 8pm: You step outside for a minute just to cool down. If your mum still doesn’t know you smoke, this is when you have a cigarette.
• 10pm: You realise you’ve been watching the lights on the tree blink off and on for the past 15 minutes. The powdery taste of red wine stings your lips. It’s time to stagger to bed.
• 11am: Someone is aggressively going around the front room with a recycling bag and based on your gifts everyone thinks your two major personality traits are ‘has feet that sometimes get cold’ and ‘alcoholic’.
• 1pm:. You remember you can go to the pub for a pint so you um and ah about going to the pub for a pint.
• 3pm: Due to licensing laws the pub is now shut, and you didn’t know and the announcement was made while you were in the bathroom, so now you have to go home. It’s cold, but not in a romantic way.
People you follow on Instagram have nicer houses than you. If there are any children present, this is the moment their energy will overwhelm you.
• 4pm: You offer to “help” whoever is cooking with “anything, anything at all” and they give you three huge heads of cabbage to shred. You sigh and pick up a knife. Two cuts in, they tell you that you’re “in their way” and “I’ll do it” and you leave the kitchen instead. For the rest of the afternoon, going and getting anything from the fridge is an extremely passive-aggressive affair.
• 9am: You are waiting for everyone else in your house to stop faffing around – “Have you put the coffee on? Can someone put the coffee on” – so you can open the presents. The wait-for-your-gate-announcement-at-the-airport of C.D.
• 12pm: You kind of want to have a shower but everyone in the house wants a shower right now so you slump on the sofa and look at your phone. People you follow on Instagram have nicer houses than you. If there are any children present, this is the moment their energy will overwhelm you.
• 6pm: A family member you sort of forgot existed has called from their family Christmas and keeps handing the phone around to various young children who don’t really know how to talk on the phone. “So how’s school?” Neither of you care about this but you go through the motions.
Based on your gifts everyone thinks your two major personality traits are ‘has feet that sometimes get cold’ and ‘alcoholic’
• 7pm: The house is really hot, now. You ate Christmas Pudding even though you don’t really like Christmas Pudding and your jumper itches at your body. You are stranded like a whale on a sofa but people keep coming in to the room and making you scooch up so they can sit next to you. The person who cooked has decided you all have to watch something really rubbish.
• 11pm:. Getting upstairs took forever but you know you’re going to sleep well. As you murmur into the abyss, you realise someone is going to make you “go for a walk” tomorrow, and you feel a clunk of dread. Same again next year?