A feast is not just about food. Just to sit at a table surrounded by the faces of your people: nothing beats it. A feast is about togetherness, whether there are two people at the table, or 16. The primal joy of good food taps into something even more fundamental than hunger; if food is a love language, a feast is a big hug.
Is it sacrilege to say that being a host matters more than being a cook? Not to disparage the skill of the chef. Quite the opposite, it takes skill to make really good gravy, concentration to remember to take the cake out of the oven before it burns, and years of experience to time a roast to come together at the right moment. It takes no skill to fold a napkin and light a candle, yet with a beautifully laid and bounteously laden table, the night feels special before dinner is served, which takes the pressure off.
Forget about matching dinner services and solemn soldiers of cutlery; this is not about whether you inherited a soup tureen or which way the blade of a knife should point. The old-fashioned rules of laying the table have made way for the modern art of tablescaping, where mixing trumps matching, and the point is to make sure everyone is having fun, not to catch anyone out for not knowing which is their side plate. Hurrah for that. Snobbery always was terrible taste.
“I’m not too particular about which cutlery goes where,” says Laura Jackson. “I think it’s nicer when the table feels relaxed rather than overly formal or fussy. I always include a glass for water and another for wine or a cocktail, and that’s really all you need. It should feel inviting, not intimidating. The secret is to approach it playfully rather than treating it as a task that has to be done a certain way.”
Jackson is a broadcaster, writer (of the cult lifestyle newsletter the Margarita Chronicles) and co-founder of homeware brand Glassette. If the rise of tablescaping as a hobby for the coolest millennial mums at the school gate has so far passed you by, it is perfectly possible that you have never heard of her, but if you are one of the Instagram-literate generation she is basically your Princess of Wales. Curating your lifestyle has become more than a hobby: it is culture, and Jackson is one of its headline acts.
I once read that the mark of a good restaurant is that you leave feeling closer to the people you ate with, and the same goes for home feasts. The best bring you together, which is why they feel extra important around the holiday season. And it starts with making everyone feel that you are delighted to have them, because then they can relax.
This is not about putting on a grand show, like Buckingham Palace preparing for a visit. Exhausting yourself doing what I recently heard described as the “no signs of life clean” – surfaces scrubbed clean of every fingerprint, hallway clutter banished behind closed doors – is counterproductive. You will be frazzled, vaguely resentful, and your guests will pick up on your vibe. Similarly, staying up till the early hours with a glue gun trying to build a Christmas tree-shaped centrepiece out of lychees because it looked great on Pinterest is a bad idea. Chill.
Don’t be too precious. Remember that by the end of the meal, your ribbon napkin ties will be on the floor or in someone’s ponytail, and that’s a good thing. Aim to put a smile on your guest’s faces when they walk in, not to stun them into submission.
“Thoughtful, warm and homely” was the mood that Jackson and her team wanted for their tables here. “For me, a warm and cosy atmosphere is the ultimate goal in winter,” says Jackson. “I’m someone who has a hot-water bottle glued to me pretty much all of winter, so naturally I want the space to feel comforting and inviting. I’ll dim the lights, light plenty of candles, and use lots of soft textures for tablecloths or napkins.”
A well-dressed table has the power to make time slow down. When you take a place that has been arranged with a touch of ceremony, and spread a napkin on your lap, you put yourself in a very different place psychologically than when you are perched on a stool in Pret munching a baguette against the clock. This is why if any table calls for an elaborate setting, it is your Christmas feast – whether that is happening on 25 December, the night before, or whatever date makes sense for your work schedule or extended family obligations. Christmas dinner can not, and should not, be rushed. You want time for second helpings, for the pop of more bottles, for the candles to burn down.
Tablescaping is a silly word, and I mean that as a compliment. Laying the table was once a chore your mum made you do; tablescaping is about fun. At fashion events I’ve been to recently, I’ve seen a vogue for tables that look positively surreal: candelabras with a peeled boiled egg on each stem, instead of a candle. Once my name was carved into a baked potato, instead of a placecard. I’m not suggesting adding “carve a chess set out of butter” to your already groaning to-do list (although, not gonna lie, it looked epic), but if you have any small little helpers to hand, you could put them to work pressing softened butter into silicone biscuit molds to chill for a few hours, so that everyone has a butter star or angel on their side plate. Delicious.
But the joy of Christmas is that you don’t need to spend hours curating a moodboard (unless you fancy it), because you have memorised it already. The visual language of Christmas is imprinted into all of us along with the words to Away in a Manger. Our Christmas table here has pops of Santa red – the taper candles and water glasses, the crimson calla lilies and decorative piles of crunchy radishes. It is fun to lean into a traditional aesthetic, because everyone loves Christmas; tartan and holly, crackers and baubles bring the generations together. Still, you don’t want your table to look like a regional department store window display, so by adding some unexpected elements – aubergines peeled into stripes, in place of candy canes – you make the atmosphere personal.
Family silver is not required: stash scraps of ribbon from packaging to tie into bows as impromptu napkin rings, or fold napkins into shapes. Again, dexterous small hands are useful here: TikTok has an endless stream of how-to videos, and last year I successfully delegated the Christmas tree-shaped napkin folds to my niece. A vegetable peeler is all you need to carve spiral strips from oranges and lemons to pile on to the table, which looks pretty and smells divine (and you can still use the fruit the next day).
Flowers are limited and expensive at this time of year, so nab some sprigs of foliage or silvery twigs from the garden or a hedgerow – they last longer, and are sturdy enough to hold a few small decorations borrowed from the tree, which will sparkle under candlelight. A tablecloth is an instant mood-changer; like theatre curtains, it brings a swoosh of instant drama. Most of us don’t use them often, which is precisely why they are fun to bring out on a big occasion – and it will come into its own for unifying a big table you’ve fashioned by wedging one from the garden against the kitchen one in order to cram everyone in.
A festive table looks glorious when your guests walk into the room, but what matters most is how it looks while they are sitting at it. “Keep the decorations low, so that they don’t block anyone’s view across the table,” says Jackson. Tall, slim candles add glam without getting in the way, and are safer than low-level tea lights, especially if there are children at the table and/or wine being consumed. If you drink a nice champagne or wine at a celebration, keep the bottle – it will make a tall candlestick, keeping flames safely aloft, and bring back good memories. But if you are nervous of flames, small rechargeable table lights – widely available on the high street now for about £30 – bring instant posh-restaurant vibes, and are endlessly useful at this time of year. Later, you can move them to the coffee table to illuminate a jigsaw without having to have the big light on, or as a makeshift bedside lamp for a guest who sleeps on the sofa.
Squeezing in extra people cheek by jowl? No problem. In fact, it’s better: chairs set wide apart feels a bit like a board meeting, and seating people close together makes the atmosphere more sociable, says Jackson. Place settings are useful if space is tight, making everyone feel welcome at a squished table. Jackson likes to place a napkin on the plate, draping it slightly over the edge of the table, and a bunch of red grapes, split into individual sprigs, to top each one adds a cute touch of bacchanalia.
Dressing a table is much like creating an outfit. Pick a colour scheme, add some textures – and, as Coco Chanel famously advised, the final chic touch is to take one accessory away so that it’s not too much. Do this in the centre of the table, to leave space so that dishes can be passed around for people to help themselves. (If you’ve got some spare tiles left over from a DIY project, these make great ad-hoc hotplates.) You are a host, not a waiter: let people serve themselves. Oh, and don’t create too much work for yourself: a simple colour scheme (Coco would have approved) means you can shove the linens all together in one hot wash to lift the wine and butter out overnight. Life is too short for multiple napkin laundry batches, my friends.
Your table should be part of the fun, not a job that gets in the way of it. “How much time does it take? Exactly as long as you want to give it,” says Jackson. “It doesn’t have to be a big production. Some of my favourite tables have come together in 10 minutes. It’s not about perfection.” When the turkey is a carcass and the wax is in clumps on the table, what lingers are the stories, the memories, the feeling of being part of something together. That’s the real feast. The rest is just gravy.
