Christmas Morning, Before Anything Else

Search for Christmas breakfast ideas and you'll find spectacular things.

Elaborate French toast bakes. Cinnamon-roll constructions. Breakfast boards. Pancake stacks. Eggs cooked six different ways.

I love food, so I understand the temptation.

But I don't particularly want Christmas morning to begin with a kitchen project.

There will be cooking later.

Breakfast has a different job.

It slows the day down before the day has properly started.

There isn't a complicated menu.

We have freshly squeezed orange juice and warm bake-off bread rolls.

Then there are the things we actually like having with them.

Coffee, obviously.

Christmas music is on.

The lights are already part of the room.

And we sit.

That's really it.

We spend so much time looking for ways to make Christmas more special that sometimes we accidentally make every part of it require effort.

Special and complicated aren't synonyms.

You don't need a completely different breakfast personality for Christmas Day.

Take something you already like and add one thing that tells you this isn't an ordinary Wednesday morning.

For us, freshly squeezed orange juice does some of that work.

Maybe yours is really good croissants. A particular coffee. Smoked salmon. Cinnamon rolls. A favourite jam that only appears at Christmas. Champagne, if that's your idea of an excellent breakfast.

Whatever it is, choose something you genuinely look forward to rather than something that merely photographs well.

This is why I like bake-off rolls at Christmas.

They go into the oven.

They come out warm.

The kitchen smells lovely.

And I haven't spent two hours making bread at six in the morning.

That is an excellent arrangement.

Convenience is allowed to be part of a beautiful Christmas.

Particularly when convenience gives you more time to actually be there.

Christmas morning already has an unfair advantage over ordinary breakfast.

The tree is there. The decorations are there. The lights are there. The Christmas music can go on.

You don't need to manufacture atmosphere from scratch.

At our house, lighting is automated, so throughout the Christmas season the lights become part of the rhythm of the day almost without thinking about them.

Put breakfast into that room and even something very simple feels different.

I'm not suggesting some solemn Christmas digital detox where everyone has to surrender their phone at the door.

I like my phone.

But Christmas morning is one of those moments that disappears remarkably quickly if you immediately let the outside world into it.

Messages can wait for the first coffee.

Social media will survive without you.

Give the morning a little space before the rest of the world arrives.

This might be the most important part of our Christmas breakfast.

There is no stopwatch.

If we're going somewhere later, fine.

But where possible, I want the beginning of Christmas Day protected from that.

It can take an hour. It can take longer. Another coffee can happen. A bread roll can mysteriously become a second bread roll.

Nobody is waiting to turn the table.

We often imagine traditions as activities.

Decorating the tree. Visiting a Christmas market. Watching a particular film. Opening presents on Christmas Eve.

But I think a pace can become a tradition too.

Our Christmas morning is slow.

That's the tradition.

The exact breakfast could change.

What I would miss is the feeling that, for the first part of Christmas Day, there is nowhere else we need to be.

If I'm going to cook a larger Christmas meal later, I certainly don't need breakfast creating another washing-up situation.

Buy the bread beforehand.

Have the orange juice ready - or the oranges, if you're squeezing it fresh.

Set out whatever you can.

Make sure there's coffee.

Done.

Your culinary ambition can wake up later.