Our childhood Christmases were spent in Ireland. Our mum and dad would pack up the car and travel to Fishguard. We would join the queues of people waiting to board the boat that would bring them home for Christmas.
We still spend our Christmas together at Last Tree Farm and have many small rituals often linked to the food we share.
Christmas Eve marks the beginning of our holidays. We carve the ham and prepare giant bowls of winter coleslaw with red cabbage, beetroot and fennel and enormous dishes of macaroni cheese to feed the army of us there.
The Christmas Eve feast always ends with a gleaming maple cheesecake. A rich baked cheesecake, butter yellow and topped with a pool of gleaming maple syrup.
This cheesecake was the inspiration for our December Tasting club bar. A golden bar of chocolate, buttery in its colour and as sweet as cheesecake in its flavour, topped with gleaming maple miso hazelnuts.
The Christmas table is set by Niamh with foliage from the garden at Last Tree Farm.
The Christmas Day meal is the main event and always the same. Dishes are made because it is someone's favourite, and Christmas would not be the same for them without them. Cauliflower cheese for Niamh, bread sauce for me and Karen, butternut orzotto for our mum.
There will be brussel sprouts, roasted carrot and parsnip, and roast potatoes cooked in goose fat because they are everyone's favourite.
The ham will reappear, and the turkey will be fresh from the oven.
The Christmas Day meal end's with a flaming Christmas pudding made by our mum sometime earlier that autumn and a gargantuan trifle.
Throughout Christmas, there will be lots of chocolate.
Hot chocolate for breakfast with oat milk, and we will add baileys in the evenings.
Winter sharing slabs will be there, Frosty Mornings and Winter Nights with their Hammers of Joy ready to be broken and enjoyed.
Tasting Club bars from the previous 12 months will be revisited and shared.
We will visit family, call into old haunts to share a drink, remember those not with us this year, and have many long walks on our beaches.
The Bean and Goose team have their own family Christmas traditions.
Bernadette will spend Christmas with her children and grandchildren, arriving with the Christmas stuffing. It is the only one they will eat.
Julie, her sisters and their brother will go for a walk with their dad on Christmas Eve.
Tanya and Tasha will spend Christmas with their children and their mum and dad.
Teresa and her family are board game aficionados and buy a new one yearly to be played together over Christmas. Their St Stephens Day means a walk through The Raven and down along Curracloe beach.
Glenda and her family also buy new board games every Christmas and they laugh until they cry playing against each other. Their granddad bows out and heads off to watch a James Bond movie.
These are the things that mean Christmas to us.