My weirdest Christmas: I insisted, through gritted teeth, that it would be fun to eat outside

"We would have a jolly lunch, safely sitting as far apart as was possible in our small front garden and protect ourselves from the freezing December temperatures and potential rain by hiring a gazebo and outdoor heaters. We would wear woolly hats instead of paper crowns, and have hot-water bottles inside our coats. It would be fun, I insisted, through gritted teeth."

"In reality, it was like an episode of a particularly cheesy sitcom. The temperature was arctic, the gazebo so wobbly it kept threatening to topple over and we had to take turns holding it steady and eating with one hand. It was also quite tricky to manoeuvre cutlery in gloves. The outdoor heaters we'd hired were pathetic, failing to keep anyone warm unless they were literally sitting on them, and even then only mildly."

A family created a socially distanced outdoor Christmas called 'diffmas' to include an elderly mother while avoiding COVID risk. They planned a front-garden lunch with a hired gazebo and outdoor heaters, woolly hats instead of paper crowns, and hot-water bottles inside coats to combat freezing December temperatures. Practical difficulties undermined the plan: the gazebo wobbled, requiring turns to hold it steady; gloves made cutlery hard to use; the hired heaters provided almost no warmth; and running plates from the kitchen to the front garden led to spills.

Read at www.theguardian.com