CHRISTMAS &
WINTER FESTIVAL TRADITIONS: SPOILT
CHILDREN AND BOILED SPROUTS
Dear Readers,
It’s that
time of year. You can’t ignore it, I’m
afraid…Unless you try very hard and turn into Scrooge…Today, we’re going to
combine Christmas traditions with travel…together at last! We’re looking at different Christmas and
Winter festival traditions from around the World. Some more traditional than others…
We’re going
to start in Australia…as that’s the obvious place to start. Thanks to the huge influx of British and
Irish to the country, their traditions have stayed the course. Although one massive difference is, of
course, the weather. The idea of a Christmas
barbie dinner on the beach is heaven to some and hell to others….In fairness,
dear Readers, apart from the sun, there appears to be absolutely no difference
between an Aussie Christmas and a British Christmas. So let’s move on to some stranger ones:
Of course, as
we have found in previous Blog posts, Japan generally leads the way in the
weird and the wonderful. Christmas in
Japan is something of a novelty and something they don’t really celebrate,
however in recent years something of a tradition has developed: the KFC Christmas dinner…yup, you read it correctly,
and if you don’t believe us, then you can check it out at www.kfc.co.jp …
In Norway
they get pretty weird and on Christmas Eve people hide their brooms…yup…hide
their brooms! This stems from the
ancient belief that on Christmas Eve witches and evil spirits came out looking
for brooms to steal to ride on…
In Germany,
December 6th is very exciting as that’s when St Nikolaus travels on
a donkey in the middle of the night and leaves treats in good little children’s
shoes. He also visits the children at
home or at school where in exchange for a present, each child must draw a
picture or sing a song. However, in
Germany, St Nicholas has some pretty dodgy followers: Knecht Ruprecht is a devil-like bloke that
punishes any children who are bad, and even weirder in Austria you really want
to watch out for St Nicholas’ counterpart, Krampus! This evil character picks up the naughtiest
children and whisks them away in his sack!
Terrifying! Basically in the
first week in December it’s a chance for young men to dress up as Krampus and
frighten the children…
Let’s get
weirder and go to Caracas in Venezuela:
you go to church early in the morning on Christmas Eve…on roller-skates!!! It’s so popular now that roads across Caracas
are closed in order for participants to skate safely to church…
We don’t all
celebrate Christmas per se, and of course Hanukkah, the Jewish traditional
celebration is not to be ignored. One of
the most elaborate is the lighting of the National Hanukah Menorah in
Washington DC in the US. For the eight
days and eight nights of Hanukah in the grounds of the White House, a 9 metre
tall Menorah is raised with the first candle being lit at 4pm without fail, and
another one lit every day for the 8 days.
It’s really spectacular and has been a tradition observed since 1979.
Closer to
home now, and what happens in Spain?
Well the 6th and 8th of December are national
holidays, so people usually take the opportunity to put their tree up and
decorate their house. Christmas as the
day itself is far less commercialised than in the UK or the US, and they don’t celebrate
it as hard as we do. However, one of
their most spectacular ceremonies is held on 5th/6th of January
where they celebrate the arrival of the three Kings or Wise Men to the birth of
Jesus. It’s called the Dia de los Reyes,
or King’s Day, and it means the most beautiful parades and, more importantly for
the children, it’s like the equivalent of Christmas Eve present- and anticipation-wise!
France? Sophisticated as ever, they don’t have the tradition
of the gaudy outdoor decs that the Brits do.
It’s a much simpler affair, with presents being exchanged either at
midnight on 24th/25th or in the morning of 25th
if you have small children. As you can
imagine, it’s all about the food:
Christmas dinner must start off with seafood, especially oysters and
salmon, and fois gras. Then, like us,
they tend to have turkey, and then a buche which is a bit like our chocolate
log.
The dinner on
24th is also important, usually tending to be immediate family, then
on 25th it’s the whole family together. Unlike us Brits, the 26th is not a
holiday, so work is resumed as usual.
Right,
then. Buckle up, dear Readers, especially
our friends from overseas. There is nothing
as complicated, as political, as class-driven, than a British Christmas!! I bet, if you’re in France or Spain or
Germany for example, you never realised that just because of the very time you
open your presents on Christmas Day denotes whether you are posh or
common?! Let’s start with the time of
putting up the Christmas tree and the outside lights. Basically, in the UK, the earlier you do these
two things, the more common you are.
Thanks to Facebook, an almost pack mentality has gone on this year, with
people inciting other people to put up their trees earlier and earlier. Yes, of course, dear Readers, it’s true that
Harrods open their Christmas department in August, but it doesn’t mean that you
have to put your tree up then!
Again, the
type of tree and outside display denotes class:
however, in the interests of political correctness, I will let you make
up your own mind as to which way round these displays are attributed. Some people love an inflatable snowman and
Father Christmas, with lovely big “Santa Stop Here” signs and flashing
lights. One of your Hapless Blogger’s
all-time favourites was spotted in the South East of England, and entailed an
inflatable Father Christmas standing over the door of someone’s house, meaning
they had to walk between his legs to get through their front door. It nearly hospitalised me with mirth. Another recent invention is a sort of
projector that people buy for their houses:
you fix it up in the garden and it projects snowflakes and Christmas
scenes onto your house…Some of us just have a few “warm white” lights. Not coloured.
Not flashing.
Next, of
course, we come to the tree. This is a
grey area. There are the traditionalists
who adore a real tree (moi) and then there are the pragmatists who store their
trees in the loft ready for next year.
No pine needles, no worries. Fake
or real? If it is fake, what
colour? Multi-coloured flashing lights
or white ones? Bows and feathers
(presumably these are people without pets), matching bauble sets or a mismatch
of homemade and acquired ones from over the years? Being in the latter category re baubles, and
the real category re tree, your Helpless Blogger had a jolly old time, with the
Mini-Blogger and the Canine-Blogger (less said about those two the better!)
getting said tree into the car (flash-back to a tree incident many years ago
where I was caused to actually put the roof down on a car that was too small
for the tree and drive the 20 or so miles home in December in the UK…frozen
wasn’t the word), transporting it home, getting it out of the car, into the
house, onto its stand and not at a jaunty angle. The latter was not achieved. It stands, as we speak, at a rakish angle
but basically, dear Readers, no one will notice as the Mini-Blogger has
decorated it and the Canine-Blogger has started to eat it…
Onto the Christmas
Eve traditions: this very much depends
where you come from in the UK. Some of
us go out and get as drunk as possible (a national pastime). Others prefer to watch The Snowman and play
chess by the open fire whilst eating mince pies. We make sure our stockings are hung up by the
fireplace (in the absence of a fireplace because of course Father Christmas
needs to come down the chimney, we put them on the ends of our beds – elaborate
stories of leaving a key out for Father Christmas to get in ensues…in our
household the dog stays up to give it to him…) and we go to bed extremely
over-excited whilst beleaguered parents stay up until the early hours creeping
around the house and wrapping presents…often quite drunk.
Now, another
class minefield in British society is when you open the presents. Basically the slower you are the posher you
are. Although this is disproven on
various levels…and again, thanks to Facebook (oooh let me advertise to the
World how many presents are under my tree), it also seems that the posher you
are the fewer presents you give. Sounds
backwards? Well, listen to this: the Royal Family famously follow the European
tradition and exchange presents on Christmas Eve, probably for practical
reasons as well, as much as anything as they have church to go to on Christmas
Day, and I suppose the Queen needs to be sober to deliver her speech…More on
that in a sec…Also, it is apparently tradition in the Royal Family to find the
silliest gifts ever for each other, as, quite frankly, what would you buy the
Queen anyway?!
However,
speak to the average British household, and you’ll find the majority throwing
themselves down the stairs at 6am and ripping all their presents open. In the Hapless Blogger household such
behaviour was never allowed, and after a demure stocking-opening ceremony,
presents were then opened just before lunch (this is where spoilt children come
in) and then after lunch we would go for a family walk, where my parents would
stay behind to do the “washing up” (we had a dishwasher) and on the return from
the walk, low and behold, Father Christmas would have visited again, on his way
back to the North Pole. This was a very
clever way of my parents spreading the presents out and ensuring a happy child
for the whole day…
Back to the
Christmas Dinner. Now, this is an
exciting prospect for most households, and usually a complete departure from
the norm. Now, we as Brits, unlike the
French, have generally no idea what to have as a starter. So we habitually go back to our 1970’s routes
and opt for prawn cocktail, or perhaps some smoked salmon. We then like to buy the biggest turkey we can
find (or if you’re my mother, insist we have something posh like guinea fowl or
poussin – honestly, I’m not kidding, we went for years without a traditional
turkey because we had to have something more cultured – then my father insisted
on getting a goose and thanks to the amount of fat that came off it, we were
never the same again and the turkey consuming resumed) and start roasting it at
about 6am. That’s when we generally put
the sprouts on, too. Again, unlike the
French, we have not got our heads around the length of time it takes to rest
after departing from the oven. We like
to take it straight to the table and hack away at it. Of course, you mustn’t forget the stuffing
balls, pigs in blankets, and again, a class thing: how many types of potato can you have on one
plate? Starting from a couple of
goose-fat roasted potatoes at one end, to roasted, boiled, mashed, goodness
knows what at the other. And the
gravy. Lashings of gravy, bread sauce
(never been able to look bread sauce in the eye since my mother’s made me sick
once) and cranberry jelly…All on the same plate at the same time. Then it’s time for pudding. One must have a Christmas pudding which you
start making in September and boil for about a month (joking…ish) and set fire
to (of course). You have this with
brandy butter and cream. Only about 25%
of the population like it but we all have it.
Now, again,
the time of the Christmas Dinner various wildly from family to family. Some have it at lunch time. Others have it slightly later but aim to
finish before the Queen’s Speech. Others
have it about 5pm. Then, afterwards, because
you’re not a Brit if you don’t aim to eat until you bleed on Christmas Day, you
need to have turkey sandwiches about 9pm.
This is essential.
The day after
is referred to in the UK as Boxing Day, and was traditionally a day when
servants would receive their “Christmas Box” from their employer and would go
home to give such boxes to their families.
Traditionally it was the day of the hunt, certainly amongst the upper classes
of course. This is getting less and less
popular for obvious reasons. For
everyone else, you either resume your eating as per Christmas Day, or for the
really weird, you go to the “Boxing Day Sales”.
Another huge phenomenon in the UK and what’s even more disturbing is the
Next Boxing Day Sale. Now, Next is a sort
of clothing/department store selling its own brand. Mid-range I would say, not cheap, but not
hugely expensive. They have this famous
sale wherein people queue up (favourite British pastime) at 4am to be the first
people into the sale. So you get up at
goodness knows when in the dark and cold in hopes of a bargain…There are other
stores too, but this is the bonkers one.
Then it’s all
over for another year…
So, dear
Readers, which would you prefer? A
Christmas class minefield or a barbie on the beach?! Or just keep to your own traditions and try
not to burn the turkey…that reminds me, I need to go and put the sprouts on
now!
