Maryam Ali, actor

For me, Christmas is about spending time with my family in a little place called Stokesley, not far from Middlesbrough. That’s where I grew up and because we don’t get to see each other so often as we’re busy working, it’s nice to know we’re going to have that time together. It’s funny because in A Proper Merry Christmess Rani (my character) is asked if she celebrates Christmas as she’s South Asian. She says her family does, they just “do it a bit differently”. This really struck a chord with me as my family is Muslim, my dad’s Pakistani and my mum’s English, but we still join in with the Christmas traditions. It’s that one day in the year when the whole family, including aunties and uncles, all get together.

Roo Arwen, actor

I grew up in a very working-class estate in Pudsey. We had a small flat there and my mum and I always got quite stressed by the concept of Christmas. But we made it our own because it was just me, my mum and my nana when I was growing up. We made it a fun day. We had a tradition of watching Shrek every Christmas and we still do that now. We just made it feel like a special day where we got cosy and watched films and ate lots of junk food. Now, my boyfriend joins us and his family too. So it’s grown a bit from that little trio, which is nice. It’s just about appreciating what you’ve got and showing people that you love them. That’s the joy of Christmas for me. It’s not about superficial, material things.

Charles Doherty, actor

To me, in the UK Christmas is a time for people to come together, particularly during the coldest darkest time of the year, but it also shines a light on loneliness and inequality. This is why I produced the carols by candlelight event during my time in Ireland – a free annual musical and comedy event for the whole community, which raised thousands for motor neuron research through donations. So that’s what Christmas means to me.

Leon Fleming, writer

My dad was a coal miner and my uncle was a coal miner, so we were a coal mining family and one of my earliest Christmas memories goes back to the Miners’ Strike in 1984, when I was six years old. Normally, on Boxing Day we always had a big party where all the family came to our house, but that year we couldn’t because we had no money. The presents we got that year mostly came from other people kindly donating them and instead of a party at ours, we went to my cousin’s auntie and uncle’s house in Wakefield. So I just remember it feeling very different. These days I spend Christmas at my mum’s house. It’s just the two of us. We do a little buffet on Christmas Eve and then we spend Christmas Day making loads of lovely foods and eating too much. It’s nice and quiet – just how we like it.

Cheryl Martin, director

For the past few years I’ve been going home for Christmas to Chesapeake Beach in Maryland, in the US, where my mother and sister live. It’s a really small seaside town that used to be a popular resort back in the day. When you go there at Christmas it looks like something out of a movie. You can’t move for Christmas decorations – they’re big and they are everywhere. You’ve got big candy canes, there’s a big Christmas tree down by the boardwalk and even a fishing penguin! So it’s full-on Christmas. There’s a lot more decorations there than here in England.

When me and my sisters were little we’d get taken to the big department stores in Washington DC and they all had these huge Christmas animatronic displays and competed with each other to see who had the best window. When I go to DC now we visit all the museums and head up and down the malls, and the family goes to my sister’s house on Christmas Day. So for me, it’s family that makes Christmas special.

Seeta Wrightson, writer

I usually host Christmas which can make it a bit stressful in the run up to it. Everyone comes over to mine in Leeds. There’s my two sisters, their other halves, my mum and dad, me and my other half. And every other year we have my stepson. That’s nine people in a three-bedroom house, so there’s a lot of cushions on the floor and sleeping bags. It’s part of the fun though! Christmas Eve is actually bigger for us than Christmas Day itself, but not for any particular reason. We started a tradition of a cheese and pate night on Christmas Eve, so there’s one couple on the cheese run, one couple on pate and another couple on bread – though whoever has to do the cheese run is a bit stressed because it’s so close to Christmas! It’s nice for us all to actually catch up at Christmas and be silly again, like when we were kids. We’re all super busy so it’s rare we get that much time together. On Christmas Eve, we usually eat, drink and play lots of board games and then Christmas Day tends to be a little slower because we’re all a bit hungover!

All images taken during rehearsals for A Town Called Christmas and A Proper Merry Christmess by Lian Furness, apart from Leon’s (credit Leon) and Seeta’s (credit Andy Hollingworth)