CHRISTMAS – it's the season of giving and goodwill – until it isn't.
So thinks Anneliese Colwell, 52, who has calmly presented her sister Mel Fallowfield, 50, with a bill for Christmas lunch the past TEN Christmases.
Hilariously, Anneliese, who lives near Sherborne in Dorset with her husband and two daughters aged 20 and 16, doesn't charge the rest of the family – just her sister, brother in law and nephews, 17 and 13.
With a survey revealing the average Christmas spending per head in the UK in 2023 is £700 in the North East and £973 in London, she might have good reason.
Now Anneliese shares her story (and swears she still loves her sister).
She says: “My sister is generally lovely, but she is so annoying when it comes to Christmas – she turns into an entitled monster.
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“She loves it and wants it to be perfect, but I have to create that perfection as she insists on coming to me every year.
''And if she had her way I’d be footing the bill for it too. But instead I charge her exactly half of what it all costs.
“It starts in November with her sending me links to M&S canapes and their giant pigs in blankets, clearly hinting what she’d like for Christmas lunch this year.
Sick of Mel's presumptuous ways
“She’s already presumed that we’re hosting Christmas, which is maddening – it would be nice to feel that I have a choice.
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“To be fair it makes sense.
“She’s the first to admit she’s a lousy cook and her flat in London is too small for us all to be there.
''I live near our parents, who are past hosting it, and don’t want to make the trip to London anyway.
“So if we’re all going to stick with tradition and spend it together then it’s got to be at mine.
''I did once say it might be nice to just be me, my husband and our daughters, and you’d have thought I’d suggested I was going out to kick some kittens for fun, such was her outrage.
DFL (that's down from London)
“So it’s all left to me. She swans down on Christmas Eve, parks herself and her family with our parents and then drifts over, stress free, to have those canapes she’s been muttering about (though she doesn’t realise I buy them from Lidl not M&S) with a glass of Champagne.
“Meanwhile I’m the one that has fought my way through hordes of Christmas shoppers to grab the best bargains, often visiting multiple supermarkets.
“I spend hours decorating my house so it’s lovely and welcoming, and I then get up at the crack of dawn to start preparing the whole meal – including mountains of sprouts, which I hate but she adores!
“Having never cooked Christmas lunch for 10 she has no idea how much work goes into it or how much it would cost if I went along with her suggestions – confession time, she doesn’t always get the free-range organic turkey she thinks she’s eating, it’s more than likely a frozen supermarket one.
They never hold back when it comes to eating
''Even so it’s incredibly expensive. She has two lovely, but very hungry teenage sons, and a husband who likes his food – they eat a lot.
''And they don’t hold back on the booze front either!
“We’ve got an Aga, which we normally have turned off, but have to switch it on when we’re catering for 10 people. The cost of running it has doubled in the past few years.
“I feel fully justified in charging her for Christmas lunch – and believe me I’m scrupulously fair, splitting it in half to the penny, there are 10 of us in total, our immediate families are four each and we swallow the cost of our parents as they did it for years before I took over.
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“I don’t charge our brother either as he so rarely comes it’s a treat to have him! Fortunately she has no idea of the cost of M&S canapes or a free-range turkey, as opposed to Lidl and a supermarket frozen one, so she hasn’t rumbled the fact I’m actually saving her money…though she will now!”
Read Mel's reaction tomorrow.
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