By Laurie Fitzgerald

While most people up and down the country are either working off the Christmas turkey or rushing out for the high street sales, football fans are looking forward to one of the most traditional days in the season’s calendar.

Boxing day football has become a national institution, and this year is no different with several Premier League fixtures and a full programme of matches in the Football League.

But while we prepare to follow our sides across the land, the rest of Europe are taking their annual winter break to allow players and supporters to enjoy the festivities in its entirety.

This always creates the seemingly endless debate of whether we should follow in the footsteps of our continental counterparts and be football-free until the new year.

However, with no immediate plans for change, the festive period will continue to entertain us with the thrills and spills of the beautiful game.

But is a full set of fixtures right on top of Christmas something that appeals to you?

There never seems to be any sympathy for the players themselves, who have their Christmases heavily disrupted year in year out due to Christmas Day training sessions or staying in hotels that night with a game early the next day.

Then again, if you were paid the sort of money that a modern-day footballer receives then you’d be willing to play on the 25th December, let alone the 26th.

Yet this doesn’t exclude how we as supporters feel; we’ll support our clubs any time of the year, and so whether today you have a home game or a long journey for hundreds of miles for an away trip, we’ll make the effort to be there.

But this is usually the time of year to switch off, relax and enjoy time with family and friends. Finding the motivation to gear yourself up for the highs and lows of watching your team play doesn’t usually fit into that ideology.

Although Boxing Day football can split opinions, many of us see it as much of a tradition as turkey and watching The Snowman while falling asleep afterwards.

It’s been around for many years and will continue to be that way – but do you view football on this day as a Christmas cracker?