Preparing Christmas Lunch vs Going Out

Christmas lunch is quite possibly the best part of the whole holiday — for the adults anyway.

Adults don’t get a lot of presents, if they get any at all. They don’t believe in the magic of Father Christmas and reindeers. Christmas programming on any channel is nothing to smile about, and to many women’s great dismay, the shops close early. It’s not even Jesus’s real birthday. If it weren’t for the food, the day would have nothing to offer.

Perhaps because Christmas lunch is so integral, the majority of South Africans still prepare their Christmas lunch themselves. Although the small minority that don’t, might actually be smarter.

Firstly, buying the food takes forever, because even though there have been weeks to prepare, somehow everyone decides to go shopping on the 23 December. No matter where you go it is claustrophobically full, they run out of stock, and the queues are zigzagging all over the shop. Its just hell.

When its time to start preparing the food there are either too many volunteers or none at all. None is actually the better option. Depending on who’s there, the cooks might include you, your mother, your mother-in-law, your aunts,cousins and siblings, and apparently all of them know how to cook and glaze a gammon better than you do.

After the meal there’s dishes. No-one ever volunteers for that. Ever.

And yet, even knowing all this, people will still insist on cooking themselves. Even though there’s less stress, irritation, and threats of stabbing. They’ll nicely ignore the fact that, when taking everything into account, it might be cheaper to just go out.

So for the majority, ignorance is bliss. People will still cook simply because it wouldn’t be Christmas without it. They might actually miss arguing about the roast, or about how much brandy to put in the trifle. The whole camaraderie between relatives and friends would be lost without it. It just wouldn’t feel as special, because really, how is it special to go out to some restaurant? People do that every day. But to gather everyone you love, and those you just barely tolerate, to try and cook a massive, wasteful meal. That’s special.The true meaning of Christmas. Food and passive aggressive arguing.