'A recipe for disaster': Why I'm ditching the turkey this Christmas 

I’m going cold turkey this year. I can’t take it anymore.

Never a consummate turkey cook, I managed to drag one to my Christmas table most years. Kicking and screaming. Me, not the turkey.

The real trouble began on Christmas Day, 2023. I had just returned from my bracing Christmas swim followed by an outdoor hot toddy. So, the form was good. Time to take the turkey out and start the work to feed my family of four and our six guests.

Our fridge being overpopulated as usual, I had left the turkey to defrost in the shed. Therein lay the recipe for disaster.

It had been an unseasonably warm lead up to Christmas that year. The shed was not cold enough and when I took the turkey out of its wrapping, it stank. I nearly started to cry. This was Christmas morning after my swim when everyone else had gone home to cook their dinner. There was nobody I could borrow a turkey from.

Time to get creative with spuds. There were roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, chips and lashings of stuffing that year. The middle of the table seemed a little empty but the ham took pride of place, happily basking in the unaccustomed limelight. I filled my guests with drink and seafood starters and nobody really seemed to mind.

Cut to Christmas, 2024, and the swim was a joyous affair with people running around with hot whiskies as well as the hot ports that I had made.

Again, the mood was elevated, festive even. I took my carefully defrosted turkey out of the fridge that had been cleared specially. I had learned my lesson the previous year. That wouldn’t happen to me again, I thought smugly.

I turned on the oven and started prepping the turkey, smearing him with butter and salt. After half an hour or so, he was glistening, plump, beautiful.

I turned again to the oven. There was something strange going on. No red light. No sound. Nothing at all. The oven was cold.

“The oven won’t come on,” I shrieked. The kids and my husband came running. But there was nothing they could do. It was past noon on Christmas Day.

My turkey was ready to roll and my oven wouldn’t turn on.

My husband rang my brother who instructed him to try various tacks, but they didn’t work. The problem was insurmountable. There were no shops open.

The turkey as always was the planned centre piece of our Christmas dinner and we couldn’t cook it. I ran next door. From my frantic look, they knew I hadn’t dropped in to enquire ‘what did ya get from Santy?’ “Are you going to your mother’s for dinner?” I asked with hope in my heart. “Oh no, we’re cooking here. She’s coming here. We have the turkey in the oven.”

Lucky ducks to be able to utter those sweet words. So no chance of sticking my turkey in their oven then. A bright idea dawned. Another neighbour was away and my next door neighbours had the key to her house. The day and the dinner were saved.

We took turns in sitting in the empty house while the turkey cooked in their oven. We weren’t leaving him unattended in case he jumped out of the oven and legged it. All ended well.

However, I am not tempted to try my luck again this year.

Of course, the same thing could have happened with a goose or indeed ducks. But could I take a goose as seriously? It could have been the early exposure to the drunken geese in the Lady and the Tramp or the juxtaposition of silly and goose, but somehow a goose does not have the emotional clout of a turkey.

Maybe it can all be traced to the year when I was 10 and my father bought a live turkey a couple of weeks before Christmas.

I decided he would be my plaything. Despite my mother’s warnings of the pecking threat, I took to tearing around the garage with the turkey racing after me with gusto. My turkey was an amusing new companion and I was distraught when I realised he was for the chop.

I will not be eating turkey on Christmas Day, I said, tearfully. And I didn’t. The parents never tried that experiment again.

Every year, the turkey came home from the shop and I helped my mother prepare it with anticipation and ate it with delight.

My sacrifice of the live turkey year never forgotten, I enjoyed the turkey all the more, just as long as I didn’t have to think about where it came from.

But now the time has come to break the bond. The relationship is over and there’ll be no talk of turkey in this house this year.

My goose will be cooked slowly and there’ll be ducks. I will have no carcass to pick over.

“Gobble, gobble” will become the ghostly sound of Christmas past.