The ultimate last-minute Christmas survival guide

Ultimate. A much-misused word. A word that doesn’t mean “best”, or “finest”, or “taste the difference”, or any of those other tempting phrases the supermarkets use to package fancy-looking ham or overpriced chicken gizzards.

No, “ultimate” means “last”. It means “final”. It means “done”. And it means “dusted”.

So, if you’re one of those people who idly leafed through the so-called Last-Minute Gift Guides that fell out of the posher daily papers a couple of weeks ago...

And if you’re one of those people who laughed slyly, used the supplement to line the hamster cage and said to yourself “Ha! There’s tons of time left till Christmas...”

And if you’re one of those people who really does wake up on Christmas Eve and realise you haven’t bought a turkey – then this one’s for you: the Ultimate, Final, Left-It-Too-Late Guide To Those Last-Minute Christmas Conundrums.

Q: When I look in the window of a jewellers’ shop, why are all the price tags always face-down so I can’t read them?

A: Because if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. There are, even here in Bath, some lesser jewellers who do show the prices of the trinkets in their displays. But you probably can’t afford them either.

Q: What is the point of Brussels sprouts? Be honest, I can take it.

A: The Brussels sprout is a symbol of seasonal regeneration, a green shoot amid the murk and mire of darkest December, a token of Dame Nature’s infinite bounty...

Q: You’re making this up as you go along, aren’t you?

A: No. Oh all right, yes. Ask me an easier one.

Q: Why do they make blue Quality Streets when no one eats them?

A: To fill in the spaces between the purple ones.

Q: All, right, I’ll come clean. It’s Christmas Eve, I haven’t bought a turkey, and the whole family, including rich Auntie Agnes, is descending en masse for lunch tomorrow. What’s my next move?

A: Run for your life. Alternatively, invest in one of those four-bird roast things that are all the rage this year. As an added bonus, you’ll have enough unidentified avian leftovers for at least three weeks’ worth of sandwiches.

Q: Right, I need to get back to the shops. Most of them have double doors, don’t they? So why do the people who are trying to get in always use the same door as the people going out?

A: What’s that got to do with Christmas?

Q: Not a lot really, just idle curiosity. And how come you’ve started asking the questions and I’ve started answering them?

A: Good point. Ask me another one before anybody notices.

Q: What should I buy for the man who has everything?

A: Nothing. But he won’t thank you for it.

So there you are. The gold mines may be empty, the frankincense trees may be wilting and the myrrh bushes may be down with the blight, but for you, Christmas is ultimately sorted. Have a good one!

Sprout me no sprouts

A report from the BBC earlier this week suggested that the rather chilly weather we’ve been having may lead to a shortage of Brussels sprouts this Christmas.

No real surprise about that, you might think. What is a bit surprising, though, is that the Beeb should have presented this as if it were bad news.

Anything that hastens a sprout on its journey between field and dustbin is a good thing as far as this blogger is concerned.

And cutting out the intermediate stages of boiling them and dishing them up for lunch seems like just the sort of energy-saving measure we should be embracing in these sub-zero days.

Mrs D takes a different view. One of the few things left growing on her allotment after the summer gluts are several sturdy purple sprout plants, which are hanging on to their treasured leafy globules like grim death. So perhaps there will still be the chance for us staunch anti-brassicans to refuse even a “token sprout” with the big bird.

There should be a few parsnips coming home too: another festive vegetable more honoured in the breach than in the observance. What’s so wrong with a handful of frozen peas to go with your turkey and trimmings?

As you may have gathered, Christmas preparations are well under way in the Dixon household, and to keep us on schedule we have all been issued with advent calendars of various designs.

Only one of these has the traditional religious motifs: seraphim and cherubim and kings on camels peering out from behind the windows.

We also have a robustly secular version, with a half-eaten mince pie, an pair of oven gloves and a box of hankies among the treasures behind the cardboard flaps. This acts as a salutary reminder that Christmas isn’t just about the fun things, it’s also about tidying up the mess afterwards.

Guess who got that one?

Then there’s the posh chocolate one, with the numbers printed in pale gold on a multicoloured background, making them even more difficult to find on a freezing December morning than those on the common-or-garden picture-only Advent calendar.

For the younger brethren (or sistren, to be more accurate but less grammatical) we have the gigantic pink Japanese cat calendar complete with even more chocolates in vaguely festive shapes.

And of course we all share that regular Christmas treat: the Advent Candle That Doesn’t Burn Properly.

It has the days of the month printed down the side, and the idea is that you light it in the evening and burn down one number a day.

So chunky is the candle, though, that the burning wick vanishes into the centre, leaving a waxy crust of unburned numbers on the outside.

It offers the perfect excuse for being late with anything from buying presents to writing cards to wrestling with a seven-foot refugee from a Norwegian pine forest: “But it’s only December the fifth – we’ve got tons of time.”

It isn’t, and we haven’t. Best look busy before it’s too late.

Why the mo will have to go

You can tell from all the instruction manuals that something’s afoot. Mrs D has dragged out from the dark recesses of the kitchen cupboard the collected works of Delia, Nigella, Jamie, Kirstie and even the sainted Constance Spry, and is starting to Plan For The Big Day.

But before we can really get stuck in to the steaming of puddings, the roasting of hams, the garnishing of Yule logs, the winding of wreaths and the curling of dainty little ribbons, there’s a certain amount of domestic preparation to be accomplished.

The sort that you don’t read about in books like Jamie’s Pukka Xmas Dinners, Delia’s Countdown to Catastrophe or Kirstie’s Home-Made House of Horrors.

For a start, the oven needs cleaning. A horde of distinguished friends and relations is descending on us for the festive season, and they won’t take kindly to a turkey that tastes like last August’s pizza.

Or last April’s, come to that.

Here’s how it works. Mrs D buys some evil-looking, but apparently award-winning gloop and announces that she’s going to clean the oven.

A day or two later, she announces she may need some help, which is gladly offered. And on the scheduled cleaning day (everything’s on a schedule) it appears that she’s going to be sidetracked into the more glamorous projects of making the Christmas pud, and the decrustation of the cooker will devolve in its entirety to You Know Who.

Ah well, we live to serve.

Here’s a question, though: if chaps were really meant to clean ovens, how come oven-cleaning kits don’t come with chap-sized disposable gloves?

Don’t all shout at once.

Next job: get rid of the moustache.

Over the past four weeks the Dixon upper lip has become gradually bushier and bushier, all in aid of Movember, the international project which aims to raise awareness of – and funds for – men’s health issues such as prostate cancer.

There’s been mockery and sympathy. There’s been some sponsorship for my mo, though more would be welcome.

Me and my mo: please sponsor me for Movember

There’s also been amazement from friends and colleagues alike at how a mild-mannered blogger and columnist has swiftly transformed himself into a ferocious Mexican bandit.

But the riot act has been read, and the fun is nearly over. There will be no point in even buying any mistletoe, let alone hanging it up, unless that thing comes off.

On December 1, the mo must go.

Which is a shame, really. You can get attached to a moustache: you nurture it, you fiddle with it in moments of tranquility or tension, you admire its reflection in every shop window.

There’s a real art to shaping its ends so they balance up and don’t make you look all lopsided.

And it’s also very handy at the end of restaurant meals – who needs a doggy bag when you’ve got a ’tache to collect the left-overs?

It’s been a creative project on a par with Kirstie’s hand-blown baubles or Delia’s blackened gammon, and it seems sad to bring it to a close.

Never mind, though: there’s always next Movember. And at least we're ready for Christmas.

Stuffed at Christmas

Right. That's it. No more shopping. Mrs D has gone out and bought so much festive grub that the supermarket shelves are empty, the checkout conveyor belts have ground to a halt under the load and the Dixonmobile has pinged a shock absorber trying to ferry the whole lot home.

We will have to survive on what we've got, although luckily what we've got would probably feed the population of a small Alpine principality into 2010 and beyond.

Even culinary items which some might consider quite counter-indicative to Christmas cheer – sprouts, dates and parsnips spring to mind – are oozing from under the pantry door at Dixon Towers.

It's a bit worrying when you start to consider how much of our traditional festive fare seems to come from overseas. Sprouts from Belgium, nuts from Brazil, swedes from Sweden, cabbages from Savoy, turkeys from Turkey – it's all some ghastly international plot to keep us regular over the Christmas period.

And at Dixon Towers there's one more ingredient to throw into the cross-cultural gastronomic mix – Mrs D's Polish Christmas Eve special.

This is an Anglicised version of the traditional Wigilia festive meal. Some of the more exotic elements of the original are substituted for more easily obtained ingredients. Your average Sainsbury's doesn't go big on carp, and your columnist vowed many years ago that he wasn't going to go out and catch one. But smoked salmon makes a reasonable and less bony replacement.

There's stuffed cabbage leaves, there's vodka, there's cheesecake, there's more vodka, there's prunes in chocolate and there's even more vodka, though not necessarily in that order. And then there's vodka.

There's even a curious ceremony in which the head of the household (i.e. your humble columnist) gets a spoonful of a dubious-looking concoction made of honey, wheat and poppyseeds and throws it at the ceiling. Whatever sticks is an indicator of what will be plentiful in the coming year. Whatever doesn't, ends up in the vodka.

But the metaphorical icing on the cake of all this middle-European bounty is the unpronounceable beetroot soup, barszcz. Just try saying that with your mouth full of szczupak.

Much stress goes into the preparation, for barszcz must be clear, red and tangy.

The tanginess comes from kwass, a pungent brew of fermented beetroot and rye bread which Mrs D started three weeks ago and is now sitting in the fridge, staring balefully at anyone who comes near it.

The redness comes from not boiling the soup.

The clarity comes from... well, let's not go into too much detail about the clarification.

Suffice it to say that you won't find methods like it in the pages of your average Jamie Oliver, and that Mrs D rarely manages to accomplish it without swearing.

It ain't half good, though. So Merry Christmas, one and all.