It's no way to earn a crust

Christmas sandwiches are unhinged, so why buy them? Hannah Twiggs looks at the cold-roast physics behind them and why your choice reveals more about you than it should

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Every November, Britain enters a kind of seasonal delirium. One moment, the supermarket shelves are lined with perfectly sensible meal deals; the next, they're stuffed with turkey, stuffing, cranberry chutney and whatever new “innovation” the nation's product developers have dreamt up in a windowless room.

Overnight, the humble sandwich becomes a festival of overcomplication: pigs-in-blankets ciabattas, Yorkshire pudding wraps, Boxing Day curry wedged between slices of onion bread, porchetta baguettes littered with parmesan, cranberries and shredded apple.

For reasons that defy science and sanity, this is the month we collectively decide that an entire roast dinner belongs in a cold, portable £5 (if you're lucky) lunch format.

But even by our own standards, the Christmas sandwich economy has become unhinged. At the top end, you have Leon's Veggie Twistmas ciabatta, stuffed with roasted squash, halloumi, apricot-and-pine-nut stuffing and pomegranate molasses sauce, retailing at £7.99. Gail's is charging £7.80 for its smoked turkey and Swiss cheese sandwich. Starbucks' Festive Feast Toastie comes in at £6.65. These are prices that would have felt absurd for a hot lunch five years ago, let alone something eaten with one hand at your desk.

It's the dissonance that makes Christmas sandwiches so compelling: they're billed as limited-edition luxuries, marketed like collector's items, yet held to the very low standards of something grabbed in a queue behind a man buying Monster and Rizla. And perhaps that contradiction is why so many of them are, frankly, a bit terrible.

Because here's the uncomfortable truth: the roast dinner was never meant to work cold.