An eat every day staple of the festive season, mince pies are a totally genius bake. Soft bronzed pastry, and inside a tart, moreish filling carrying every flavour of Christmas – the first one of the year is always a moment of sheer deliciousness.

Totally love them? Then you’ll understand where we’re coming from…

In your opinion, it is perfectly acceptable to eat mince pies in November. You wouldn’t even kick up a fuss in October. It is beyond you why they are only available at Christmastime.

The debate rages over whether mince pieces should be shop bought or homemade. Your own inner turmoil over this rears its confused head every single year. The best solution you have so far come up with is to have both types on hand always.

Mince pies are suitable food at any time of day. Fact. Come December, you will happily have them with yoghurt for breakfast, with a hunk of cheese for lunch, and with a glass of red for dessert. They can accompany literally any meal.

Puff pastry or shortcrust? You’ll happily take both.

Arguably the best part of a homemade mince pie is the sticky, oozy bits that have escaped from the pastry lid and turned a deep caramel colour. Mmmm.

Mincemeat itself is shockingly underrated. It makes absolutely no sense to you that the stuff is usually restricted to mince pies only. You will happily eat it straight from the jar with a spoon. Even better if you have some clotted or brandy cream in the fridge to alternate spoonfuls with.

You understand the love for Christmas cake and Christmas pudding, but really, you’d prefer a cake or pudding-sized mince pie instead.

As a child, leaving out a precious mince pie for Father Christmas was actually rather a wrench for you. Did he really need to eat it instead of you munching it? Nope.

You are conflicted over fancy mince pie flavours. Supermarkets will zhuzh up what’s already perfect with silly flavours (prosecco mince pies, chocolate orange mince pies, boozy mince pies, chocolate brownie mince pies… ), but you still can’t help but try them.

You do of course have a supermarket own brand mince pie favourite – and you will travel to stock up.

On Boxing Day, when everyone else is stuffed full of turkey and Quality Street, it doesn’t matter how many mince pies you’ve eaten in the preceding month, you can always fit in one more.