Brace yourself, the Xmas dinner is on the horizon

...which entails eating the worst food you'll eat all year short of finding Britain's last remaining Wimpy's, all in the name of tradition.
Being a product of two cultures, I am in the privileged position of having two menus of stodge to choose from: in the blue corner, a giant ham (over-salted and fatty), potato, carrot and swede casseroles (as uninspiring as they sound), and salad built around beetroot (Satan's contribution to the vegetable kingdom). In the red: turkey (blanded to the max), mince pies (for the love of God!), Xmas pudding (a neat shortcut from all the wrong ingredients to loggy end product, obviating the need for digestive processing), and, for those still standing, maybe a side order of sprouts (Satan, we got the point already).
All of these were rightly considered a feast before Northern European dietary habits were finally saved by the rest of the world, when stodge was all you could hope to get and avocados were the stuff of a madman's dreams. But the year's one big family meal was always meant to be about feasting in the name of celebration. Why aren't we eating something special like sashimi instead? Or the season's very own meat of choice? Yum...