I was a seventeen-year-old once. Scared and nervous in my first job in a busy restaurant, trying desperately to survive my first “festive period”. It was a nightmare. I ran up and down a tiny spiral staircase more times per day than I thought possible. I spilled gravy on customers. I annoyed the bartender. I drank too much. I locked myself in the loo and cried. I was trying to do too much with too little. One patron (gravy-soaked) took pity on me:

I was nonplussed.

“KISS.” She tried again, “K-I-S-S. Keep it simple, stupid.”

So I did. I kissed my way through the holiday season. I stopped fussing so much over tables, and stopped running down that tiny staircase to the kitchen every other minute. I kissed a chef at our Christmas party, too. And it didn’t get less busy, or less boozy, but it did get a little bit easier.

A decade on I threw a Christmas party. This was last year, and it was the first big Christmas party I’d hosted in a long time. I made an effort. I pre-batched three litres of negroni and three more of a dirty martini; I devilled twenty-six eggs. I washed and chopped forty radishes. I roasted forty pigs-in blankets. I peeled carrots, sliced fennel, and whipped feta. Pitas were roasted, hummus was made. I had white wine, red wine, rosé. I had beer. I had crisps. I had ten more devilled eggs hidden in the fridge, just in case. And do you know, in the mix of all the music and the frey, what the only thing people really wanted was? To get pissed and eat pigs in blankets.

I noticed the PIBs first. All forty of them, gone, in the space of six minutes. Were there more PIBs? Really? No more PIBs? Ok. A sad turn back to the crudité, hummus, kilo of Comte, Salami, Olives and Pita, which would, disappointingly, have to suffice.

Next, I went to top up some glasses—which various people thrust toward me with uniformly powerful enthusiasm.

“Oh, sorry, I don’t think this is the same as what’s in your glass!”

“It doesn’t matter!”

And as I turned the dregs of their thoughtfully selected red wine into a bastard rosé, I thought to myself, “it really doesn’t, does it?” And then I went to eat a devilled egg, because there were so many of them left.

So, this year, things are going to be a little different. I’m done with choice; I’m done with time-consuming prep; I’m keeping it simple, stupid.

This is not to say I’m done with being an excellent and considerate host, or making an effort. And it certainly doesn’t mean I’m doing away with abundance. In fact, quite the opposite. I’m doubling down on abundance. I am going to have a fuck of a lot of things, but of two things, only: fizzy wine and pigs in blankets. Fizz is festive. PIBs are delicious. What more could they want? I know the answer: it’s nothing.

What follows is the plan for a Christmas drinks party that is so simple you have a chance at actually enjoying yourself, and without a fridgeful of festering eggs for days to come.

You will need:

—A large ice bucket

—Platters (I’ve got four)

—A lot of ice (as much as you can fit in the freezer, if you have a small freezer, purchase it last minute or get your more punctual friends to pick some up on the way)

—Glasses (it doesn’t matter what; plastic cups are acceptable—advisable, even—but I like duralex tumblers which are cheap and chic and reusable, it’s worth investing in a few boxes as long as you have the space to store them)

Booze

There are lots of ways you can approach this. One is crowdsourcing, which involves asking your friends to bring a bottle of “something fizzy”. This increases your chances of being inundated with undrinkable bottles of Freixenet (a wine whose name I can neither pronounce nor want to), but also that someone brings that bottle of Pol Roger, still in its box, that their mum gave them for their birthday last year. If you’re running a party on a budget, this can be a fun (sometimes funny) option. No sparkling wine is so bad that a drop or two of Chambord can’t make it into a nice Kir Royale [NB here: a bottle of Chambord next to your ice bucket so people can Kir themselves is a nice, christmassy, touch].

Next, you can do what I do, which is buy as much of Lidl’s Cremant de Loire as my budget will allow. It is, for my money, the best value supermarket wine out there. As I’m sure you know by now, cremant, or a good Cava, is almost always preferable to a Prosecco, as it is made using the traditional method, the same method used to make Champagne. Sadly, I can offer no good estimations of how much people drink, because a decade of working in restaurants has left me with a group of friends who drink like Irish seamen at a desert oasis.

So, Prosecco isn’t the best, but that’s not to say it’s off the table completely. Supermarkets increasingly sell magnums of the stuff (the Waitrose one is, for my money, the best), and swanning around a party with a magnum of bubbles is an undeniably good look. You can also shove some nice orange juice in your ice bucket and turn it into a Bucks Fizz and Pigs in Blankets party, which is chic, in a Jilly Cooper’s 1980s sort of way.

You can, of course, do any combination of these things. You can buy some “nicer” Champagne to start, and keep the magnums of Prosecco for later. You can ask some people to bring things. Throwing a party should be as much about you having fun as it is your spreading of a generous Christmas spirit.

Food

It’s just pigs in blankets. Lots of them. Cooked well, so there are no pale, flappy bits of pig flesh left around them: crisp and brown all over, please. Condiments are necessary, I use three and they are all mustard: wholegrain, English, Dijon. Ketchup is for children, and mayonnaise has no place here. The other thing I do is put crisps in bowls — for the vegetarians (though it’s best not to befriend them in the first place) and the general grazing types (that’s me). Crisps in a bowl also lets people know it’s a serious party.

Ambience

You do not have to decorate, but lighting must be low and, if possible, flickery. There is only one real requirement for a great Christmas party, which is mistletoe—you know, for that all important kiss.