Tanja on what makes Christmas special for her

What is your favourite thing about Christmas? 
I love the build up towards Christmas. The anticipation and the buying or making presents for loved ones. For me it’s about making memories. 

Do you have a family tradition at Christmastime? 
My parents are both Dutch and it was a tradition to open presents on Christmas Eve. It got to the point that by the time we were teenagers we used to start opening them a week early! But we’d always leave the main present until Christmas Eve. Now, for my family we open presents on Christmas Day. We have a quite a few family traditions. My daughter, since the age of 6 or 7, bakes our Christmas cake in November and we put up and decorate the Christmas tree in the first week of December. I make traditional Dutch biscuits like speculaas and a pastry filled with a sweet almond paste. Because my husband has Scottish heritage, I make shortbread too. Our Christmas nearly always has a traditional ham but anything else can appear on the table too. We like to experiment. 

Did you have a Santa bag growing up?
No, but I always liked the idea of a Santa bag. All our presents were haphazardly arranged under the tree and were placed there from anywhere up to two weeks before Christmas. It was fun to hunt for the ones with our name on them, and to squeeze them and shake them to try and determine what they were! 

How will you celebrate Christmas this year? 
Probably with my family. Not much of my parents’ family is in New Zealand, so usually it’s just my mum, husband and daughter and maybe my brother and his family. Though we have been dreaming about a white Christmas in New York! Wouldn’t that be magical.