Either a feast or a fiasco

You are one of those people who look forward to Christmas, aren't you? The twinkly lights. The delighted expectation on the children's faces. The bonhomie of the parties and the greeting of friends. That bracing belt of hot whiskey when you get home from midnight Mass. The joy of the feast on the big day, with family and friends gathered around the table, glasses clinking, voices laughing, all together.

What planet do you live on? Let us get straight to the heart of just what Christmas is all about. In his masterly, clear-eyed study of the human condition, The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defines Christmas in the following way: "A day set apart and consecrated to gluttony, drunkenness, maudlin sentiment, gift-taking, public dullness and domestic behaviour". Attaboy Ambrose! On the nail.

So why, when we are all full of the very best intentions, can it all too often go so wrong? Simple. At Christmastime you are expected, overnight, to acquire the skills of (a) a master chef (b) a psychologist and (c) a waiter and bartender in The Savoy. Things which you don't do from one year to the next.

Throw parties. Cook a bird the size of an ostrich. Carve a goose. Be nice to your uncle. Buy the right pressies for your sister's kids. Remember quotations from A Christmas Carol. Give me a break.

Any one of these things is hard enough, and now you have to do them all at the same time. It won't work, as broadcaster Clare McKeon, knows: "My worst Christmas disaster happened at the beginning of the Christmas meal. The whole family was gathered round, and I brought in a whole tray of seven to eight solid Waterford goblets. And you wouldn't believe it, I dropped them and the whole lot broke. The meal just never recovered. It cast a whole shadow over the day because I felt really dreadful".

Christmas is a balancing act, not only of crystal, but of emotions, tastes, relationships. And, it is a feast which carries greater risk to life, limb, body and soul - and wallet - than any other beanfeast. Consider this: presented with the enormous Dickensian blow-out which is the meal, you are still expected to save the greatest danger until last. The meal cannot conclude until you have lit and carried to a table surrounded by kids and elderly parents, a weighted object which is doused in alcohol and blazing with flames. The Pudding.

You are then expected to put this fireball down safely without (a) setting fire to the house (b) setting fire to the assembled company or (c) setting fire to yourself.

It's almost impossible, as Clare McKeon, remembers. "Well, I know it's a cliche, but my mother did burn her eyebrows on the plum pudding. It really did happen - you have to be so careful."

THE McKeon family has obviously cemented a catastrophic pact with the pud. McKeon adds: "My brother once ate a slice of the plum pudding while it was still burning - which is easier to do than you would think".

Puddings are dangerous. You think you've got through to the end safely and, suddenly: kapow! Maria McCann and Michael Macmillan, broadcasters and owners of Macmillan Media in Belfast, have faced their share of pudding problems, as McCann remembers: "Michael's mother always makes a Christmas pudding which is an old family recipe from Cloncullick in Co Monaghan. It's a real wartime recipe using stewed tea and carrots and it's cooked for eight hours the first day and then four hours on Christmas morning until it's black - it's a real delicacy. It also uses real suet.

"So one year, everybody sat down as usual and as usual it was the real focus of attention - is it as good as last year? Is it the same as Grandma used to make it?

"Well it was pretty awful that year - but the family bravely ate it anyway. The suet was putrid - everyone became extremely ill as well as being terribly disappointed."

Yes, of course: food poisoning. With the cooked ham beside the uncooked fowl; and the smoked salmon beside the cheese, your fridge is "microbe city".

But the fear of microbes leads to one of the greatest Christmas disasters of all. The turkey may take hours to cook - but it doesn't take that long. Most of us dread the pink bloody turkey to such an extent that we add about an hour-and-a-half to the cooking time, and dry out the meat.

And then there's what Ambrose Bierse calls "the gift taking".

I remember, thanks very much, being given an unplucked, undrawn goose one year by a family member. It was a big bird, and it was delicious. Or so people told me when it was all over. I was too tired after plucking it to eat the bird.

But if we can get all this cooking right, we are also then expected to become the world's greatest host.

This takes planning, confidence, and experience, and many of us fall by the wayside. Freda Hayes, managing director of Meadows & Byrne, gives a large party each Christmas and has learnt from experience. Her most practical piece of advice for seasonal parties is to go to a shop fitter and, for about £15, buy a clothes rail on which to hang people's coats. "I remember one stormy winter's night, piling about 70 coats about the place and the house quickly began to look like a farm yard."

When it is all over, we say "Never again!" But in a year's time we do it all again. Not Clare McKeon, however. She says: "Ever since the last disaster I've gone away for Christmas. Last year I went to Morocco, this year I'm going to Tabago. "Christmas is just too traumatic. You have to go away if you want to enjoy it. Take Delia Smith, there she is giving us the Christmas countdown, us suckers! And meanwhile she's got it sussed - she's off sipping cocktails in Barbados. That says it all."