Hello — I’m Linda Garrould, and this is the small family blog I’ve been writing about Christmas since 2009.
Christmas Countdown exists for the part of the year most of us spend the rest of the year planning around: the advent calendars worth opening, the Christmas markets worth visiting, and the recipes worth keeping. If a gift guide, hamper review or family-tradition piece lives on this site, it’s because I’ve actually used it, eaten it, or relied on it on a wet December afternoon.
Our mission
To help families plan a Christmas they actually enjoy — without spending the back half of November feeling behind. Every post here is written for the way I plan the season myself: practical, honest about cost and effort, and useful whether you’re a year-ahead organiser or you’ve just realised it’s the third weekend of Advent.
Who I am
I’m a Norwich-based writer who has spent twenty Christmases working out which advent calendars are worth the money, which hampers turn up looking like the picture, and which bits of the festive shop window are best ignored. The site covers the planning, the cookery, the gift research and the practical Christmas Day and Boxing Day “what’s open” questions — most of it written from a kitchen table in Norfolk in the run-up to whichever season is next.
Christmas Countdown has been running since 2009. The site has been many things in its time — a private planning notebook, a recipe diary, a half-serious Advent journal — but it has always been written by the same person, in the same house, for the same kind of family.
What you’ll find here
- Christmas planning. Countdowns, weekly to-do lists, the order to do things in, and the dates that quietly matter (last orders, Stir-up Sunday, when to put the tree up).
- Advent calendars and hampers. Honest reviews, round-ups by price band, and notes on which ones are worth pre-ordering early.
- Festive recipes. Straightforward home cooking from a real Christmas kitchen — make-ahead, freezer-friendly and tested on actual children.
- Gift guides. Recommendations for the people who are genuinely hard to buy for, written by someone who’s spent a few too many December evenings staring at a department-store website.
- Christmas markets and seasonal days out. Where to go, when to go, and what’s worth the parking.
- Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s “what’s open” guides. The practical questions late December raises — supermarket hours, attractions still open, what to do with leftover hamper cheese.
A note on links and ads
We accept a small amount of paid advertising, and use affiliate links to help fund the site’s hosting and the time it takes to write properly. We only recommend products we’d happily buy ourselves, and the price you pay is never affected by an affiliate link. There’s a fuller breakdown on our advertising disclosure page, and our editorial policy sets out how we research, fact-check and handle gifted reviews.
Get in touch
Reader questions, recipe corrections, festive tip-offs and “have you seen this Christmas market?” emails are always welcome — please use the contact page.
If you’re a brand, agency, PR or tourism board, please head over to Work with us for partnership, press-sample, gifted-review and seasonal-campaign enquiries — that page has all the named inboxes and what we say yes and no to.