Christmas morning begins with the chaos of stockings—once opened in a tangle on our bed, now sprawled across the sitting room where limbs and paper have room to fly. A full English breakfast follows, and most years we stop in the churchyard to visit [our adopted son] Wesley’s mother. I hug Wes and remind him how loved he is.

Lunch is the grand centerpiece: a traditional English feast for about thirty people. Monumental turkey, generous stuffing, crisp potatoes, sausages wrapped in bacon, bread sauce, flaming pudding, brandy butter, mince pies—the full, glorious choir.

But the table is where the real magic happens. Pinecones for our English roots, palms for the tropics, and crackers—crowns, jokes, absurd toys—because Christmas crackers demand silliness, even under blazing sun. Each year arrives dressed in a new idea: blue-and-white bowls of oranges and fir, tartan and silver, white-on-white lace and candles, or golds and corals layered with rosemary and bay. Anything with shape, scent, and a story.

One year [my husband] David asked what I wanted for Christmas. “A tent,” I said. He imagined something practical. What arrived was a Rajasthan canvas pavilion—hand-painted borders, scalloped valances, block-printed stars—half palace, half traveler’s dream. We pitch it somewhere new each year and celebrate inside our wandering room.

Whether we’re lighting a fire in the heat, decorating a tree that arrived by boat, or feeding thirty friends beneath the palms or a tent, Christmas here remains joyful, chaotic, exhausting—and completely full of love.

—Excerpted from the new India Hicks: Entertaining, with a Side of Chaos