This Christmas is going to be spent like every other Christmas. I've never actually missed a Christmas at home, I've always been in Carlow. Last year was the first time we weren't all together. My sister, who went travelling for a year, was away but she came back on the 22nd.

My older brother decided to go away for a year and he left about two weeks ago so he's not going to be there but the one who travels the most will be. We'll miss Dave and it's always a bit strange when everyone isn't going to be together but we'll call him in Bondi, which is where he's going to be.

Christmas Day in our house is really laid back. You scrape yourself out of bed on Christmas Day and try and put on something half decent. Then as soon as you're home from mass and you've done the rounds, we'd sit around in the trackie bottoms and pyjama bottoms. We've never been a family for Christmas outfits.

Once we get in and shut the door, we're all looking rough. After we get back from mass, we'll always have smoked salmon and brown bread and a couple of bottles of champagne and that's lovely if you've had a late Christmas Eve, which is usually the case.

I tend to spend Christmas Eve down in the pub with my friends, the lads I wouldn't have seen for a long time. That's a very special time for me because a lot of them would be working abroad or in different parts of the country and it's the time that everyone comes together.

We've made a habit of not opening Christmas presents until after we get back from mass. We have quite a late dinner, at four or five o'clock, and once we're full of food and wine, we open the bulk of our presents. It's fine when you're my age but my 14-year-old brother literally has none left to open because his are opened at 6am in the morning.

Generally we do a bit of TV before dinner, just slouching around. My mum does an amazing dinner and will have done a lot of the preparations for the Christmas dinner before we get down.

We'll help by setting the table and the good glasses come out, in the good dining room. We'll all muck in, put on the stupid hats out of the crackers and catch up. My nan comes down as well.

Mum's pride and joy is her stuffing, which she makes herself, with breadcrumbs and nuts and raisins, and some sort of liqueur. She does potato gratin - cheese, cream and herbs, it's gorgeous as well. Her red cabbage is amazing. That's my favourite part of the dinner and I would literally just eat a plate of that if I could. She puts raisins, apple cloves and red wine into it and she stews it all down and for me, it's the highlight.

She does the Brussels sprouts because she has to - she loves them but nobody else really does. We'll eat one or two to keep her happy.

There are always huge portions at Christmas dinner, the kind where you have to undo the top button of your trousers. We then have Christmas pudding with Mum's brandy butter.

Again, it's nothing really exciting, just sitting and drinking and eating too much.

Generally, we're in bed early enough, about midnight, too full to do anything else.

TOM DUNNE BROADCASTER The Meal: Absolutely traditional with a mountain of roast potatoes, which is the most important thing My Perfect Present: The baby, there's no question about that, and we got that five months ago I'm spending it down in Kilkenny with my in-laws, that's the plan. We have a new addition to the family, a five-month-old daughter Eva, so she'll be providing the entertainment; they'll be providing the Christmas cheer.

I'll be down there from the 23rd, because moving the baby is a military operation - we need a car with enough things in it to invade Iraq so that's a big move. Some time on Christmas Eve, I'm coming back to Dublin, so I can visit my own family, my mother and stuff and then on Christmas Day, hopefully I will go for a swim in the Forty Foot at about 10, not too early. I did it two years ago and I loved it, I wasn't able to do it last year so I'm hoping to do it again. It's great craic, half of Dublin is there and it's really enjoyable.

Then we'll have breakfast and after that I will get into the car and drive down to Kilkenny again, and arrive there for dinner at four o'clock. My wife's sister is cooking the dinner, followed by Audrey's mother's famous trifle, which is beautiful.

Then, we'll just relax and watch television for the rest of the evening. Actually, I'll probably relax and watch Eva for the rest of the evening.

JACK L SINGER The Meal: Traditional turkey and ham My Perfect Present: A nice sun holiday. I'd like to get away from this lovely brisk weather that we're having I'm heading down the country to my parents' place - I'm not married or anything - for a decent Christmas dinner.

I wouldn't dare cook it myself.

Most years I generally get up relatively early, enjoy opening up the presents, all that kind of stuff. Christmas morning TV is always pretty good. Sometimes I go to mass, sometimes I get asked to sing in the local choir, 'Oh Holy Night' or something like that and if I can I do. My father's in the choir and while I wouldn't be particularly religious, I do enjoy doing it and the ceremony of it all. I'll spend pretty much most of the day driving around visiting friends and family, all my nephews and nieces.

Obviously, Christmas is very important for children and you remember what it meant to yourself when you were a kid.

We'd eat dinner at about five or six o'clock - too late to actually taste it most of the time. I love Christmas dinner but it's usually a bit of a blur by that stage. My mother usually takes care of it but it depends on who is around and everybody will take a bash at cooking it. Me, I would avoid it at all costs, just for people's safety.

I wouldn't want to poison anybody.

There was one very good year when my brother demanded that he made the gravy and I don't know what he did with it - he put milk or something like that into it - and everybody poured it over their dinner.

Something went very wrong and it ruined everything. The Christmas dinner was fine but the thing that was poured over it tasted horrible. I usually just pass out after dinner and I'll have made arrangements to meet my friends but I'll probably wake up too late. I'm usually incapable of even watching TV.

I'm free on Christmas Day and St Stephen's Day and after that, it's heaps of gigs in a row so it's just pure madness.

With music, you tend to be working while everyone else is enjoying themselves but I'd rather that anyway. I get more of a buzz from gigging than having a good night out.

RACHEL ALLEN TRIBUNE FOOD WRITER The Meal: The traditional one - turkey, glazed ham, all the trimmings. Maybe some caviar and champagne beforehand and a mincemeat tart for dessert My Perfect Present: I'm still looking for the perfect bag but I haven't found it yet. A pair of Louboutin heels would be wonderful It probably will be early when we get up on Christmas Day, around sevenish. I'm hoping it's not going to be like two years ago when the boys woke up in the middle of the night. I looked at the clock and thought it said 7.10am when in fact it said 1.10am. I was wondering why I felt so rough, so it was a case of, okay, everyone back to bed.

We'll have a big breakfast at about eight or nine. I might try and go to church myself. Then we're going to cook lunch ourselves at the house and we're having a few friends over for drinks. It's a traditional one - turkey, glazed ham and I might try and get some caviar and serve it with champagne. I'm a pudding person but the boys don't really like it. I might try a mincemeat tart.

Then we're going to Ballymaloe for a big family gathering. The boys love it because they have free reign of the house.

Normally when they're there I have to tell them to be quiet because of guests but obviously there are none at Christmas and they go up and down the stairs on trays and go mad, mad! We'll have a big meal and there are lots of games for the children and it does turn into quite a late evening.

KEVIN DUNDON CHEF The Meal: Food is so important in our house and always has been. It's a traditional meal and there will be my mum's superb turkey with sage, chestnut and sausage stuffing, artisan cheese, sherry trifle and eggnog My Perfect Present: I'm not really into presents. I don't really want for anything and if I want something I'll go and get it and that drives Catherine [my wife] mad because I'm impossible to buy for. But it would be something practical like a ski jacket. Catherine bought me a really, really cool present for my birthday, which has just gone. She got me 10 truffle trees, which are actually hazelnut trees with truffle spurs. I thought that was a really neat present. Poor Catherine, at this stage, she needs to be really creative. I'm usually the boring one who goes out and buys her a piece of jewellery Traditionally we've always gone to the Shelbourne on Christmas Eve but it's closed this year and we've a wedding in Dunbrody on the 22nd, so we'll close up on the 23rd and come up to Dublin with the girls. We're staying at my sister Sharon's house in Ballsbridge. Beatrice, our au pair, is coming up too.

On the 24th it's Mike's, my mum's husband's, birthday, so we'll all have drinks and we're talking about taking the kids for lunch in Mario's in Sandymount and probably have a very easy Christmas Eve because of Santa and then go back to Sharon's house and have more drinks there.

Christmas morning we probably get up at three o'clock in the morning with the kids! And it's great because their cousins are roughly around the same age and they get on really well so there's going to be great excitement. We'll open all the presents and then we'll go to mass in Sandymount at 10.

Then Catherine, the two girls and myself will go out to Jim and Mary, Catherine's folks house in Dalkey and we'll spend the afternoon with them. Then we'll come back to Sharon's place and my mum and Mike and my grandmother come over for dinner. Mum is bringing the turkey over but everything will be cooked in Sharon's house. I'm bringing the ham and the Christmas cake and the Christmas pud.

This year, Mum will probably do a lot of it and I'll help Mum but if it's down in Dunbrody, then I'll do everything. It's just easier because it's a commercial kitchen and the hotel is obviously closed so we have the whole house. We'll have the family down in Dunbrody next year, as we do it every second year. I don't classify cooking as work, it's a pleasure.

Our Christmas is quite traditional really. Mum is a superb cook and in our turkey there will be chestnut, sausage and sage stuffing - it's great. Then my sister is really partial to sherry trifle so there has to be one of those and of course there has to be the Christmas pud. I'm not a huge fan.

The only reason I ate pudding as a kid was there was always money inside the pudding and unless you ate it, you never got the money. But whereas I thought there was money inside, there wasn't - it was my grandfather who'd put in the largest coin, the ten pence coin, and I only found out this year that he'd had the coins in his handkerchief and would cough and say 'Oh, what about that!' and then all the grandchildren got the coins. So I always ate the pudding, laced with brandy butter and cream to numb the pain. But now I actually quite enjoy it, but I'd only have a small amount.

We'd eat between four and five.

Everything is about tradition at Christmas. For example, Ciaran, my brother-in-law, his tradition is making eggnog. He'll use every single pot in the kitchen just to make it but it's beautiful.

He whips up the egg yolks, then adds cream to that, nutmeg and rum and some sugar, then he beats up the egg whites, folds them into the eggnog. It's gorgeous but it's an ordeal in itself.

I'll bring up some smoked salmon from Arthurstown, we'll have that, and the eggnog, when we're opening the presents.

After dinner, we'd always have farmer's cheeses and port. The tradition in our house is that we take the cork out of the port bottle and we throw it away. You pour with your right hand and pass with your left hand. You just keep passing it around the table and if you pass with your right hand you miss a turn. It's like a drinking game - we're lushes really!

We leave the table around nine or ten o'clock. Food is so important in our house and it always has been, and this is a real celebration of food and family and we just sit there and chat. It's a great time and it's always good fun. We just crash after that and probably play a game of Monopoly.

Christmas is all about kids. Last year, my sister and my brother-in-law were away for the year, spending Christmas with Ciaran's folks. And Mum and Mike were going away as well, and Catherine's folks were away, and we were closing the hotel for a week, so I said to Catherine, let's just go away. I thought it would be magical for the kids to see real snow at Christmas and we went to Switzerland to a place called Arosa and it was a fabulous hotel and so idyllic. Funnily enough, they actually celebrate on Christmas on Christmas Eve.

The only downside to it, I thought, was Christmas dinner wasn't what we would have. We had veal and I'm not a veal person at all, but the kids loved it and they'd never skied before. We normally go on a sun holiday in February with the kids and we were discussing it for a while and really what we want to do is get into ski holidays with them. We were completely convinced after this particular holiday because we met so many families there and young adults were still going on holidays with their parents and enjoying it, whereas you'd never go on a sun holiday with your parents at that age, from 16 on.

But I don't think you can beat the atmosphere and the après-Christmas in Dublin. The atmosphere is fantastic. It's probably the only country in the world that actually celebrates Christmas to such a degree.

In America, they call it 'the holidays' and it's literally Christmas Day and Stephen's Day and that's it. And everything is right back to the way it was afterwards and you see very little pre or post. It's probably the only thing that hasn't changed with the Celtic Tiger over the last 10 years. Everyone is in the office from seven in the morning to ten at night.

Even the pub scene isn't the same but Christmas hasn't changed and I hope it doesn't because I think it's a great tradition that we're left with.

DOMINI KEMP RESTAURATEUR The Meal: Depends upon what the Four Seasons Hotel has on the menu!

My Perfect Present: Genuinely, going to the Four Seasons for lunch. That's our mum's present to us Christmas Eve is about getting the last few customers wined and dined and home at a reasonable hour. My daughter has gone to South Africa for Christmas to Conrad [Gallagher], her dad. She really loves Capetown and she has a little brother down there and I'm sure it will be absolutely lovely for her. So, we have no child at home this year; it's just myself, my mum, my sister and my boyfriend spending the day together.

We're going to have lunch in the Four Seasons, which is really nice. We're flat out right up until the day and I just don't feel like cooking when my daughter isn't here. We're threatening to go on a six-mile walk before lunch, but we'll see if that happens.

When I do cook, I'm fairly traditional. I love turkey and Brussels sprouts, I'm a little Brussels sprouts fiend. I love mashed potato, bread sauce and cranberry sauce. It's the veg that really make it. I'm not a huge fan of desserts like Christmas pudding. After lunch, we have a load of movies recorded for when we get home. I have Sky Plus, which I would recommend to anyone. It's so good. It's a rather extravagant way to spend the day, but we've worked hard. And of course, there will be a box of Cadbury's Milk Tray.

DEREK DAVIS BROADCASTER The Meal: A feast. It's the time to use the best ingredients you can get your hands on and I source the best shellfish, fish, turkey, ham and beef My Perfect Present: When you reach a certain age, within reason, you have most of the things you need or want, so it's always a challenge to my family to come up with some peculiar gadget or something that I can use.

I'm an angler and I fish freshwater and saltwater so very often I might get Christmas present that might have something to do with fishing. I'm a petrol head, I love cars so very often it might be something to do with a motor car. I have a boat, so something that might suit the boat. It's very hard to say. I know it sounds like a real cop-out but I love the surprise and I'm always touched by the ingenuity. I have very ingenious children The day starts with a cooked breakfast and all the family are at home for that one.

Then the next thing I'll do, from about 11 o'clock onwards, I set up a bar. I open a few bottles of very good wine that I've been hoarding for a while and I have a kind of open house that runs till about six o'clock for whoever drops in. I do the cooking so I'll always have slices of spiced beef and ham.

I make a game terrine every year and it's made with whatever's available. I normally go down to Peter Caviston and there might be duck, teal, pigeon breast, venison, then there'll be pork and beef as well, rather a lot of brandy and a few bits and bobs.

That game terrine is kind of an institution. It's wrapped in rashers and baked slowly in a bain-marie in the oven.

It's nice and rich and it's kind of grazing material. People who are coming in to drink don't want carbohydrates. We don't serve spuds and rice, there might be a little bit of toast or brown bread because I do smoked salmon as well. But by and large they want solid grazing food and a slice of the game terrine goes down very well.

There's rather a lot of alcohol in the house, even though we don't actually drink a lot but Christmas Day is different.

The designated drivers turn up for fizzy water and everybody else has a few, including myself. But it is an opportunity to look at wines that you bought several years ago and you say 'That should be tip top now'.

It's all very jolly and it's mostly spent gossiping and we'll have the Christmas dinner in the evening. I'll put the turkey in the oven, sometime early in the afternoon and I'll give that a slow roasting. The older you get, the more competent you get at Christmas. You have a timetable.

I've ordered the smoked ham from Hick's in Dalkey, simply being the best smoked ham I can buy around the island, in my reckoning.

Once you know the ingredients you're going to need - the ham, the spiced beef, the turkey, the vegetables, the smoked salmon, crab claws - it is the feast of Christmas and having cooked the Christmas dinner, Stephen's Day is really spent grazing on the remnants of the open house the day before. Rather sadly, all my pudding sources are now deceased. Elderly female relatives, my mother included, used to make the pudding.

This year I was promised a Christmas pudding for attending a function in Blackrock a couple of weeks ago and it didn't materialise. I'll buy it from Marks & Spencer's if push comes to shove because I did a Christmas pudding tasting and the Marks & Sparks one came in second place, and it's very good pudding so I'll get that if I don't get one as an act of charity from a friend or someone who's recently taken up pudding making.

But it is rather sad that now all my pudding makers have gone to the great pudding maker's kitchen in the sky. On the sweet side of things, Georgina Campbell gave me a rather knacky idea which is to segment a lot of mandarin oranges and pour half a bottle of Cointreau over them and stick them in the fridge, and that's a lovely light dessert.

We'll also make a traditional trifle, although I'm more likely to use marsala, the Italian fortified wine rather than sherry because it has a lovely flavour - the Italian version is called zuppa inglese, which means 'English soup' because they didn't know what the English were up to.

At the end of the evening, there will be a designated driver in the family and I will be drafted in to call on relatives or something like that but to be honest, at the end of the evening, I'm probably not feeling too much pain. I'll have a short visit, come back, settle down in front of the telly with a decent glass of wine and probably fall asleep.

I love Christmas, I really do. It's not actually that high stress and I love having people in the house.

JOHN WILSON SUNDAY TRIBUNE WINE CRITIC The Meal: Betty Crocker's organic turkey from Glenealy and all the trimmings, light and fruity wine My Perfect Present: A single bottle of really brilliant wine because everyone thinks you get free wine when you work in the industry but you don't tend to get very good wines. Or, I'd like a computer course, a sort of idiot's guide to computers. Other than that I have everything I want in life My mother-in-law is Danish, so our celebrations start on Christmas Eve, the main event for Danes. We generally go to their house, and have either pork or duck, with red cabbage and caramelised potatoes.

The traditional dessert is a creamy rice and almond dish, which has a whole almond hidden somewhere. Whoever finds the almond wins a prize. My wife and her siblings are a very competitive lot, so generally they consume massive amounts of rice to increase their chances of winning.

After that we dance around the Christmas tree, singing carols both in Danish and English. The tree is lit with real candles and looks spectacular. Then it is time for the first round of presentgiving. My mother-in-law is a brilliant hostess and cook so it is always a great occasion. The Danes have a great many simple, but very enjoyable, traditions in the build-up to Christmas, something we Irish could learn from.

On Christmas morning we will go to church at 10.30 and then possibly drop in on a friend. However, this year for the first time in many years, all of my own siblings will be arriving in from the US, the Netherlands and London for Christmas, complete with partners and children.

There will be 16 for lunch, so I imagine it will be a very lively, disorganised affair, with the usual jokes and rows.

Part of the fun will be cooking with my son and my sister, who is a chef. We will go for the traditional meal. Having experimented with goose on a few occasions, last year I bought an organic turkey from Betty Crocker in Glenealy, which was the most wonderful bird I have ever eaten.

This year we will have more of the same, accompanied by the trimmings. I haven't decided on wine, but it will be something fairly light and fruity.

The afternoon will be spent lolling around, and hopefully a bracing walk along Greystones seafront.

CIARA ELLIOTT TRIBUNE FASHION EDITOR The Meal: Turkey, ham, Brussels sprouts, roasties, mash, parsnips, corn, cranberry sauce, pudding, cream, brandy butter, eggnog My Perfect Present: A really good car. I believe they're doing a new Fiat Bambino.

They're trumping it up the same way they've done the Beatle and the Mini Tonight I'll go to the local pub and go to midnight mass. I usually get to bed a bit late. We'll probably end up at some neighbour's house - there's usually a bit of shenanigans going on.

On Christmas Day, we won't get up that early although there's always a plan to go to the Forty Foot for a dip or go up to UCD for the Goal Run. Sometimes we do one of the other and I'm going to meet my friend Aisling, go down to Seapoint and jump in the sea at about 11 o'clock. She'll give me a wetsuit because it's too freezing for me.

Then we'll go back to my mum's for brunch.

We have this thing called 'Connie cake'.

This neighbour of ours, called Connie, who's in her 70s now, has been making this cake for as long as I can remember, and she delivers this fruitcake with beautiful white icing on top to everyone in the neighbourhood. You eat it with big slabs of butter. We'll have that and eggnog, maybe a bit of smoked salmon and scrambled or poached eggs.

Then we pop around and see people because we've such a big family and it's extended all over the city and then we'll all converge at my brother's house for dinner.

There will be about 10 of us. We're not really a nuclear family and we usually have strays - people who haven't gone back to their own families. We never know exactly how many people there are going to be. My sister lives in London, my brother lives in Seattle and we never know if they're going to come because they always book at the last minute.

We eat at seven or eight o'clock and we give all our presents early. We don't do any TV watching, we're more of a gamesoriented family - Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly, all the classics. We're a very competitive family and everyone takes it really seriously. But nobody really leaves the table until 11pm.

Then, my friends from the neighbourhood will call in and I'll go on to my friend Nessa's house - she has a Christmas party every year - and there will be continuation of the games, like Pictionary and charades and all these acting games.

I'll be there till the wee hours, eating tins of Roses and boxes of biscuits, just lolling around. This is the first year we won't be in my mum's house because she sold it during the year. Although she's just moved up the road, it won't be the same.