Christmas is coming, the goose is getting frightened

[venta]

The other day, I accidentally heard a bit of Terry Wogan on Radio 2. He was reading out something to do with overheard conversations, which involved the phrase "Well, is it really a Christmas dinner if it doesn't say 'chipolatas' (on the menu)?"

So, I'm wondering...

What do you consider essential for a Christmas dinner ? I'm talking the standard turkey-or-other-large-bird affair; if you go in for something different then please tell me about it in a comment, but don't shove it in the poll.

Also, this isn't a request for what an ideal Christmas dinner would contain (since the answer is clearly "all of it"). I just want to know which things must be present for it to be a Christmas dinner rather than a nice Sunday roast. For example, I'm a huge fan of pigs in blankets, but will settle for sausages and bacon.

If there are any Americans reading, maybe you should answer about Thanksgiving instead. I've no idea what you lot get up to at Christmas.

[Poll #888876]

Yes, I'm a fool. Brussels sprouts. Of course. They were meant to be in there, and you can't edit polls after the fact.

[*] I fear this one is a mystery to many people - we always have toasted breadcrumbs with ours. They're much nicer than they sound.

Comments

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

To be a Christmas dinner, it has to have sprouts and a lack of certain things compared to a 'normal' Sunday roast in my family:
No Yorkshire puddings
No mashed potato (apparently it's difficult to find a big enough pan for all the mash our family gets through...)
The wrong sort of stuffing (I like sage & onion. Generally there's something with chestnuts in at Christmas which I don't eat).

So, I actually used to prefer a 'normal' Sunday roast, and at Christmas I had to put up with prawn cocktail, turkey, ham, roast potatoes, carrots, gravy, parsnips, chippolatas, etc etc....
It's a hard life ;)

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. Forgot to mention - I used the past tense because recent Christmases have either involved having a barbecue in Spain or eating with a different family, which has shown that some traditional things are not universal... (sausage meat stuffing is a nice tradition to adopt!)