Alex Gomez, frontman: My dad’s half of the family is all Columbian, so traditional South American customs are celebrating Christmas on Christmas Eve. We would go with my grandparents to church and then we’d come back and the presents had all magically gotten there. I don’t know how my parents/anyone did this to this day! I’d be waiting by the Christmas tree until we would leave to go to church, and we’d come back two hours later and there’s all the gifts there that I could never work out how it happened. I’m convinced one of them would leave during church for home, sort it out and then come back. I also do Christmas cookies with my mom and it is a tradition that I look forward to every year.

Harry Ruprecht, lead guitar: In England, everybody eats turkey on Christmas but I’ve never eaten meat so I haven’t had turkey. In my family, we do a liquid gravy, stuffing and bread sauce. The Queen also gives a speech called the Royal Christmas Message, which will now be the King’s speech this year. We would leave carrots outside the front door for the reindeer, which didn’t make any sense because they wouldn’t land there. Sometimes we would leave a key out; not a real key, a big, fake key. We didn’t have a chimney so how else would Father Christmas get in?

Max Wanduragala, drums: My Christmas Eve is very pretty much the same every year down to the minute. The same sort of family friends come round and on Christmas Day we do a bit of a split because my mum’s English and my dad’s from Sri Lanka. We have half typical English food like a roast turkey and then half Sri Lankan foods. My mum does have one weird thing: if you don’t take down a decoration after the 12 days of Christmas, it has to stay up the whole year. I don’t know if that’s just her. Once I had a little snowman that I painted in school when I was about five years old and I forgot to take it down one year so it was there the whole year.

"Step Into Christmas" by Elton John

"Driving Home For Christmas" by Chris Rea