If I haven’t wrapped up warm and wobbled around in circles, it isn’t Christmas. I can measure out my life in London’s ice rinks. Broadgate Circus in the early 00s, because it was cheapest and I was skint. Several seasons of Skate at Somerset House with my ex, because it was our “romantic” Christmas tradition (actually, he hated skating). This year, I’ll be mixing old and new: Hampton Court Palace, where people have been skating since the 1800s, and the inaugural Skate Leicester Square. As long as there’s a mug of something mulled afterwards, I’m happy. Rachel Dixon, travel writer
Years ago, a regrettable ex-boyfriend bought me a merman Christmas tree ornament so bizarre that it short-circuited my brain, unleashing something primal within me. Ever since, I have scoured department stores, gift shops and the darkest reaches of the internet for more mermaid baubles, like some kind of gay Gollum. I now have more than a hundred, including a flautist mermaid, several Santa Claus mermen and (my favourite) a merperson who is somehow also a pig and a ballerina. Unboxing my treasures at the start of December is both the first gladdening sign that Christmas is upon us and – arguably – a cry for help. Joe Stone, lifestyle editor, Guardian Saturday magazine
These last couple of years, I’ve decided to carry my Christmas tree home. Kids smile and point, strangers say hello, and last year an old guy stopped me and told me an extremely long-winded Christmas joke but – most importantly – walking around with a 2m (7ft) tree slung over my shoulder is the only time I feel remotely masculine. Short of getting smashed on mulled wine and making small talk with my extended family, it is the most festive I feel every year. Stuart Heritage, writer
I don’t remember how old I was when my dad started cooking fish pie on Christmas Eve, but at some point during my childhood, the tradition stuck and I’ve eaten it every year since. When I lived in Dubai, I went to six supermarkets to source smoked haddock and have even cooked it with smoked herring for my in-laws in the Netherlands, which was surprisingly tasty! Nothing says “Christmas is coming” like eating something which requires huge quantities of butter and cheese. Lizzie Cernik, writer
To avoid the last-minute scramble to get my gifts in order, I buy my presents throughout the year. To keep the Christmas spirit alive throughout December (and to smugly remind myself of how organised I’ve been), I subscribe to “intermittent wrapping” and wrap a present every few days. Not only does this help avoid hastily and horribly wrapped gifts, it slowly creates a pile of presents that make me feel like Mr Claus. Sammy Gecsoyler, writer
From 1 December, I bring out my festive dinnerware and do not consume a single meal unless it sits atop a seasonal illustration. It makes me feel merry three times a day – more, if I include snacks. I recommend starting subtle with an Anna + Nina candy cane plate or Anthropologie ice-skating mug. By the 25th, you’ll be grabbing a novelty bowl and devouring Christmas pudding off baby Jesus’s face. Frances Ryan, writer
For me, the festive season hasn’t started if I haven’t attempted (with gusto, and preferably after a glass or two of mulled wine) to sing a Christmas carol descant that is almost definitely out of my vocal range. While that might not be for everyone, going to a Christmas concert or carol service is a surefire way to give you that twinkly feeling – and it doesn’t have to be in a church; the choir I’m part of performs our Christmas show at a local pub. Lucy Knight, writer
My favourite festive tradition started during lockdown: to keep my then six-year-old occupied, we baked (vaguely) Christmas-tree-shaped biscuits. We ended up with more than we could ever eat, so left them on neighbours’ doorsteps. The following year, remembering how they’d lifted everyone’s spirits, we did it again. Now neighbours say our delivery is their sign that the festive season has begun – like Santa crossed with Mary Berry (although that’s really an insult to both). Polly Hudson, writer
I find a quiet half-hour to reread (or listen to) David Sedaris’s Santaland Diaries, documenting the season a 33-year-old Sedaris spent as an elf in Macy’s department store. Resplendent in green velvet, Crumpet (Sedaris’s elf name) and his fellow elves witness the best, but mostly the worst, of the heightened season: awful parenting, outlandish demands and tantrums, plus the odd moment of magic. It’s a bleakly hilarious, timely reminder of how the pressure cooker of Christmas can make monsters of us all. Emma Beddington, writer
I make Christmas pudding; that’s not the festival ritual, I personally don’t like the stuff – but just before I make them, I start looking for the pudding basins that everyone, from Nigella to Nigel Slater, agrees are the best. Some years I can find two basins and no lid, other times only lids, sometimes nothing at all. Then I ask all the family and friends I have who are close enough that they’d steal my pudding basins, before inevitably buying new ones. Once this is done, I’ve essentially had a Jane Austen visiting season with a yule theme and Christmas has begun. Zoe Williams, writer
Every year, I make my own Christmas cards. The process begins in late November when I go out and photograph London’s festive lights – the Regent Street angels and Carnaby Street’s inventive designs are my favourites. I cue up Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas to get in the spirit, then I make prints of the best images and create the cards using blank card sets. It’s become a ritual I really look forward to – as do family and friends who receive them. Anita Chaudhuri, writer
I usually try to sample the full gamut of Christmas coffees from high street chains – many of them revolting, most of them overpriced. Black Forest, gingerbread, eggnog, pot pourri – you sell it in a coffee; I’ll buy it – not because I particularly enjoy the taste of synthetic apple but because, to me, nothing feels more festive than downing an entire week’s worth of sugar in three gulps at 10am. Kate McCusker, writer
For the last few winters, a few friends and I have gone to a local outdoor sauna for a catch-up. We started in summer but they come into their own in the deep cold. I love the smell of cedar and the quiet, intense heat. But it’s lying in a cold plunge, rooted by pain and cackling with one another while staring up at Christmas lights twinkling in tower blocks and office windows that feels almost spiritual. The sauna hasn’t quite replaced catching up over wine. But it’s getting there. Morwenna Ferrier, Guardian fashion and lifestyle editor
Every festive season, my siblings and I decorate the Christmas cake that my mum made and drowned in alcohol a few months earlier. We use rolled fondant icing and always fashion three decorative polar bears, while my mum opts for a fondant Christmas tree and Dad usually crafts something rogue: a snowman with a comically long nose perhaps. Before tucking in on Christmas Day, we all have a good giggle at how our creations turned out. Emma Russell, Guardian production coordinator
City life in the winter can be a drag – grey, wet and overcrowded. Then, suddenly, the street lights go up and everyone’s mood seems to lift. My family and I always pick an afternoon to bundle up in scarves and gloves, wait for dark (at 4pm) to go and see the London lights, from the classy displays on Regent Street to the slightly ridiculous ones on Oxford Street. Peering up, I can’t help but feel festive. Lucy Webster, writer
We watch a festive film every day in December. This works brilliantly because it takes the pressure off any single one of them being good: if you end up with a Christmas clanger one day, there’s always a classic less than 24 hours away. It also reduces arguments: there’s plenty of room for six smalltown romcoms and Elf and Trading Places. It’s a tradition of give-and-take, and overindulging until you feel slightly sick. What could be more Christmassy than that? Joel Snape, writer
When the oranges stack up in the fruit bowl, there’s only one thing to do: make Nigella’s clementine cake. (I say Nigella’s but the cake’s true mother is, of course, Claudia Roden.) It’s the most exquisitely moist, fragrant, uplifting bake and leaves your home smelling like a Moroccan orange grove. This cake’s magic is to require so little and give so much, which is Christmas spirit in a nutshell. Chitra Ramaswamy, writer
I have never listened to all Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, but I have watched Rambo: First Blood at least thrice. I have also listened to Paul McCartney’s, let’s say unlikely, Christmas song Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reggae enough times to fill a stocking. Because what is Christmas but a time of beauty, culture, high art, elegance, traumatised muscle men hiding out in the December-frozen woods and violin-heavy, one-drop renditions of novelty records? Nell Frizzell, writer
I have a tradition of sewing (badly) a felt decoration for each of the kids’ stockings every year – something relevant to the previous 12 months. Last year it was a portrait of our new dog, but it has included a cow (my daughter’s nativity role) and a sprout, to symbolise my son’s perfectly spherical baby head. The great unveiling of the new decoration has become part of the general excitement – and the gift to myself, through my mediocre attempt at crafting, is a feeling of disproportionate pride. Emine Saner, writer
It’s not Christmas until I’ve arrived at my parents’ in Bristol on Christmas Eve, helped peel a couple of sprouts, then cleared off to my local – The Black Swan – to meet friends, drink too much and maybe even have a Christmas snog. Except … as time has marched on, my friends have moved away, I’m wary of hangovers, and all the girls are married. So now, in my only hope to feel festive, I go to The Black Swan with my parents and their friends and, at best, hope for a Christmas kiss off my mum. Rich Pelley, writer
My annual wreath-making session is really just a thinly veiled procrastination technique. I should be working through festive to-do lists but instead I stalk the woods brandishing secateurs, in search of the ultimate holly berries. Back home, I poke the holly, along with ivy and wild rosehip, into a chunky wicker circle I got from a supermarket years ago. It’s a soothingly mindful, if prickly, pursuit and the result always looks and smells delightfully Christmassy. Amy Fleming, writer
One of the surprising pleasures of being out of step with the television release cycle is being able to bookmark a vintage Christmas episode for a festive night in December. An example: I was several years late to Mackenzie Crook’s delightful comedy, Detectorists. Speeding through season two during spring, I was soon directed to the 2015 Christmas special. But no; this was not the time for it. Seven months later, on Boxing Day evening, I knew exactly what I needed. On the calendar this year? The Ghosts Christmas special. Rebecca Liu, commissioning editor, Guardian Saturday magazine
I don’t consciously recall watching A Charlie Brown Christmas, but when I heard the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s Christmas Time Is Here in a bar 10 years ago, it felt wonderfully familiar and comforting. I got hold of a copy on spruce green vinyl and listening to the album quickly became a festive ritual. Later, my kids got into it too, and now insist it is on repeat from October. The laid-back jazz and beautifully chaotic children’s choir always provide our soundtrack for writing cards and decorating the tree. Sarah Phillips, writer
I shop for wrapping paper and ribbons. The more the paper looks as if it has been painted by the hands of elves, the better: I seek out brightly marbled or roughly textured lokta ones. For about 17 years, it’s been my annual mission to keep them hidden, thereby preserving the myth of the elves, until they are found on Christmas morning in the stockings. I thought my children would have grown out of this. They probably have; it’s me who hasn’t. Paula Cocozza, writer
When I moved in with my three flatmates, my mum donated her old festive decorations to us. Among them was a Father Christmas toilet seat cover, mat and toilet roll holder set. Four years later, it has become a regular fixture during the festive season; once the Santa cover is on, Christmas has officially started. It’s actually quite impractical – the toilet seat often falls down while you’re using the loo, on account of Father Christmas’s nose – but it’s a guaranteed mood-booster. Emma Loffhagen, books writer
