Having a Christmas dinner with my university flatmates and housemates has been a tradition for me since first year. For the last three years, we have dedicated one Saturday in December to spend together, wearing our best Christmas jumpers, playing Secret Santa, and most importantly, having the Christmas dinner!

Of course, I will 100% recommend that as a flat or house you have a group Christmas dinner before going home for the Christmas holidays, because you’ll have a great time together and it will really help you to feel in the Christmas mood!

While you might not want to dedicate the entire day to celebrating Christmas several weeks early, having Christmas dinner together, with all the trimmings including pigs in blankets, crackers, and most importantly those awful Christmas cracker jokes, is a great way to end your first term of university no matter what year you’re in.

Cooking the dinner itself can be the tricky part. As a house, we have been lucky that one housemate takes the lead role, giving us jobs to do such as preparing the veg, but she is happy to cook it! Of course, we do offer to help but Dani is pretty much semi-professional at Christmas dinners now!

‘Christmas day’ and Christmas dinner at university with your flat and housemates is something you’ll never forget. They are pretty much your second family anyway so spending a pretend version of the day meant for family is ideal really. Plus it means you can have an extra Christmas dinner and its pretty much impossible to turn down a roast, especially a Christmas one!