Christmas style — what’s naff and what’s not

I like juvenility and, when there are children around, we should amuse them. You should have Christmas crackers for them, but I can’t stand it when they’re from Asprey and cost £1,000. However, if there are no children around then it’s absolutely pointless — the hat and the crackers are so clichéd, and nobody can honestly believe that these things make people laugh. It’s another piece of boredom.

I wouldn’t dream of buying presents for anybody. Are you mad? And, of course, that means they stop buying them for you, which is great. I think the ritual of leaving presents under the tree is tedious. The amount of wasted wrapping paper and trying to rack your brain to find something appropriate and then spending the money unnecessarily — forget it. I give my children cash in a traditional Chinese red packet and say: “Buy whatever you want, and don’t give me anything other than your thoughtfulness and love.” I’m mercenary like that.
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Kelly Hoppen, interior designer
I’m mad about Christmas. If we’re in England I really go to town. I love wreaths. The florist John Carter does the best ones — he does a classic wreath, then fills it with loads of pussy willow. I also love having the biggest tree you can fit in the house — I often attach pussy willow to each branch to make it wider. I even like the old-fashioned tinsel you throw over a tree, but I think people would drop dead in my house if I did that.

I’ve gone through different phases of decorations. We used to have a tree that was a mishmash, but I’ve now got so many baubles that I do tend to go for a “look”, I have to admit. If you’re going to be ridiculous about it, you have to wrap your presents in paper to match the tree’s colour scheme.

However, I have yet to discover a way to put your Christmas cards up without them looking awful, and I can’t bear cinnamon sticks — they’re so naff — and those dried orange slices are the absolute worst.

What I love the most is getting pine tree branches and putting them on the dining table. I have lots of big glass witches’ balls on there too. And then you can have big baubles on a coffee table or a tray. Although, being a purist, I do sometimes look in horror at how much stuff I’ve put into the house.

Stephen Bayley, curator and co-founder of the Design Museum
Taste comes when appetite is satisfied. So there’s not a lot of it about at this time of year. It’s ironic that the splendid Prince Albert — whose initiatives in art and technical education helped frame our modern concept of “design” — was also responsible for importing the first Christmas trees from his native Germany. It was his lieutenant, Henry Cole, who created the Christmas card. Proof, if you like, that most of our ghastly “traditions” are in fact inventions of the Victorian era.

To the fastidious aesthete Christmas is a spectacle of alarming excess and waste, although there are ways to avoid the kitsch. Domestically, I won the Christmas tree argument years ago and have never met anyone who actually likes turkey, so we have neither. Instead, we eat peasant feast food. Perhaps a huge and generous minestrone or a cotechino with spicy lentils and mostarda. There will be better-than-usual wine in magnums, because magnums make any wine luxurious.

And everywhere lots of church candles; we are still using wobbly beeswax ones bought in a Greek supermarket. Always an open fire; and, feet to the blaze, I’ll do something sinfully indulgent, such as reading a book with a big slice of cake mid-afternoon, waiting for appetite to subside and taste to take over. But that won’t be until January.

Allegra Hicks, designer
I split the Christmas period between London and Naples, so I tend not to have a tree because it feels too sad when I have to throw it away before Christmas Day. Instead, I decorate the house with bunches of mistletoe and red amaryllis, and always have a simple green wreath on the door, which I get from Flowerbx. In the absence of a tree, the wreath provides that lovely pine fragrance.

We have always been more about handmade presents, and this approach is reflected in my decorations. Using a glue gun — which never ceases to thrill — I stack baubles to create colourful glass formations. In candlelight, the baubles reflect the flicker of the flames and create the loveliest colourful display.

I have amassed quite a decoration collection over the years, and some of my favourite pieces are a trio of silver birds I found at John Derian. I love adding to my treasures on Portobello Market in December, and Naples is also a great place to build up your collection; beautiful wooden Nativity scenes, figurines and symbols are hand carved and painted on Via San Gregorio Armeno, where shop after shop sells Christmas bounty year-round.

DJ Taylor, author and critic
The first rule of snobs is that calling it Xmas is out; you do not write that in a Christmas card, and should never ever call it Chrimbo. It’s just Christmas. You must also never talk about Santa Claus, but Father Christmas.

Christmas is a great time to emphasise the traditional verities — the old, correct ways of behaving. You go to church in the morning, even if you don’t believe in God, and it’s mandatory to watch the Queen’s speech and, ideally, stand for the national anthem.

It is about communal activities — all playing games together, such as Consequences. Nobody should be on the PlayStation. It’s an opportunity for the host to insist on standards of behaviour that don’t normally apply. The other thing you don’t do is watch naff Christmas specials — it’s social death. Put on a classic film DVD such as The Sound of Music instead.

The whole modern Christmas tradition is only about 170 years old; it was the early Victorians who created it. So whatever rules you make, be like a Victorian and assert them with absolute authority.
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Annabel Astor, chief executive of furniture company Oka and mother of Samantha Cameron
For me Christmas is about tradition and so, in terms of decorating my tree, I’ve got 30 or 40 years’ worth of bits, and every year I take away a few of them and buy a few more. I don’t redo everything because I think there’s something nice for the children about seeing the same things every year. On the top of the tree we have a special fairy. She’s incredibly bad taste, full of glitter and gold and sparkles.

I try to put a focus on flowers around the house and a lot of paper flowers too. I go for Christmassy colours, such as red, white, blues mixed together, perhaps with a bit of yellow and green, whatever matches the room. I like to make it warm and cosy, then I put in little LED lights here and there, just twinkling away. I used to do poinsettias a lot. I went through an azalea phase, and my friends used to bring them at Christmas, but now I’ve got over that — I’m quite fickle with flowers.

We do presents after church and before lunch. The children have been up since about 4am, so they are allowed to open their stockings before breakfast, then we go to church. When we come back we have a cup of coffee or glass of champagne — and then the kids dive into their presents. I pile stuff on to the table for Christmas lunch. We have a traditional meal and crackers, and I scatter gold chocolate coins across the table. It is rather gaudy, but children being part of it is what I like.

Peter York, co-author of The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook
Nothing about Christmas is vulgar, because everything about Christmas is vulgar. So plunge right in. Get the whole thing catered by Iceland. I don’t have children, but the undertone is that Christmas should be for children and Christmas is for your inner child. I love sweet drinks, the not tremendously “tasteful” modish drinks. I want kir royale with an awful lot of Ribena, and I want Baileys. These drinks are guaranteed sozzlement.

Of course, when I go somewhere that has been done up beautifully, I admire it like mad, but I wouldn’t do it myself. I have a number of friends who are startlingly, brilliantly design conscious and sometimes it makes you a bit uncomfortable — like really expert foodies being innovative about dinner-party courses. You don’t want that at Christmas. You want to know what you’re getting. You want to aim for a broad and familiar indulgence.

Patrick Grant, designer
Christmas should be simple. I don’t like an overly adorned tree, for example, I want to see green. We go to the trouble of cutting the poor thing down, so we might as well look at it. A colour scheme on a Christmas tree is also completely wrong — it’s naff to try to style your family Christmas. You want to make everybody feel as relaxed as possible. Christmas is about the only time families always come together and “taste” doesn’t matter.

However, it is nice to get dressed up for the main meal on Christmas Day. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to cook you a fantastic meal, and it shows respect. It’s increasingly rare for people to sit down and eat dinner together, and it’s nice to make a little bit of effort.

What I really can’t stand is not having turkey. There’s a lot of one-upmanship and it needs to stop. I think Instagram is largely to blame for anxiety levels. The whole point of a holiday is to relax, and now everybody feels the need to outperform. Just have a bloody turkey and don’t look at your phone for the whole day.