The shops are already stocked up with festive goodies, the John Lewis advert is already causing many discussions. How long will it be until the Coca Cola TV advert is aired?

The build up to Christmas 2015 is well under way but it’s always been something I’ve tried to avoid, until at least the end of November. For me personally, Christmas is more about family, friends, traditions, lots of food and fun, rather than the early commercial hype (although I do get embarrassingly excited at the Coca Cola TV advert).

I’m a stickler for tradition when it comes to Christmas. Christmas for me means:

• Christmas jumper and the old faithful Father Christmas earrings at work.
• Catch-up with old school friends on Christmas eve.
• Half asleep church going with my Mum (I am not a morning person, but I try to be a nice daughter and go!).
• Traditional Christmas-hat-on-the-cat photo.
• Present giving and cracker pulling with my parents, siblings and their families.
• And then the Christmas dinner. Always: prawn cocktail (very 80s but a favourite), turkey with all the trimmings and Christmas pudding
• Ending the day with a dusty old board game and all gathered around the TV to watch Doctor Who.

For my family, Christmas lasts for longer than one day too. We have family birthdays to celebrate, in-laws to see, friends to meet up with, and enough food to feed an army!

But those are just my, very British, very ‘me’ traditions. In my day job, I was recently looking for stories about Christmas festivities around the world and it was really interesting to see how different nationalities celebrate. To pick a few (and please excuse me if internet searching tells me wrong): Germans hide a pickle in the Christmas tree and the first child to find it gets a gift; in Malta they have cocoa-chestnut soup; and Hungarian’s enjoy their poppy seed cake.

Christmas means many different things to us all, for some it’s about family or friends, for others it is a chance to relax and take a break from work and study.

How do you spend your Christmas holiday?