Allow me on this eve of Christmas Eve to say that England tops USA for Christmas. Hands down. No debate. No question. Not even a possibility of a question. Here's why:
1. English radio stations do not play nauseating Christmas music like Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the red nosed reindeer chestnuts roasting by the open fire jack frost nipping at your nose city sidewalks etc. etc. from the middle of November non stop for weeks.
2. English churches have Advent Carol services and good music. With decent choirs.
3. Bells ring from church towers mysterious high and free
4. Thanksgiving at the end of November has not knocked the edge off the festive season
5. Turning on the lights at Oxford Street
6. Hamley's toy store in London
7. Once in Royal David's City to begin the Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings.
8. Father Christmas is far more low key and sensible than the larger than life fat elf called Santa Claus who is promoted by the Coca Cola company.
9. People still go house to house Christmas carolling. Really. They do.
10. School nativity plays feature Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus. Really. They do.
11. The Christmas pantomime. "Look behind you!"
12. Christmas TV - do they still run the Two Ronnies and Sound of Music?
13. Sherry and mince pies--even if they are dry and stick in your throat.
14. Holly and ivy in the village church
15. The Christmas Cracker
16. The Queen's Speech
17. Christmas cake. Dark fruit cake with a layer of marzipan topped with hard icing and miniature fir trees and houses and so forth on the top and a red ribbon around it. Honest.
18. Smelly Stilton Cheese and port after Christmas lunch--with those bland 'water biscuits'.
19. Christmas pudding--yes with a sprig of holly and set alight with brandy
20. Far less commercialism and tacky 'Christmas Spirit'
21. Women don't wear Christmas sweaters with embroidered snowmen
22. Brussels Sprouts
23. Wearing paper crowns from the Christmas cracker
24. Bad jokes from the Christmas cracker - "Q: What is green and goes up and down? A: A gooseberry in a lift."
25. The parish Christmas bazaar - where you can get a hand knitted dolly to cover up your loo roll
26. Midnight Mass by candlelight in a medieval church.
27. Presents in a pillowcase
28. In the Bleak Mid Winter by Christina Rossetti
29. It really is the bleak mid winter
30. Christmas Cards with pictures of Jesus Mary and Joseph rather than the people who are sending you the card.
I love this post! I will be doing an English-style Christmas dinner, complete with roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, and Brussels sprouts, but it isn't the same when it is 80 degrees outside.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you think mince pies are dry, you have never had my grandmother's mince pie. It wouldn't be Christmas without it!
I do, however, have to plead guilty to #30. *hangs head*
We do 23 and 24 in South Carolina.
ReplyDeleteYes, we still have the 2 Ronnies. Was on yesterday. Merry Christmas.
ReplyDeleteYes! - to everything except the sprouts. (And calling them "Brussels" makes them taste even nastier.)
ReplyDeleteHow I will miss the English Christmas once again, and especially the Midnight Mass,
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas from Athens
Are you having the mother-in-law for Christmas?
ReplyDeleteYes - it'll be a nice change from turkey.
What? No goose?
ReplyDeleteThe Classical Pops music channel on Sirius/XM satellite radio, which normally plays the most familiar classical melodies, provides high class Christmas music 24/7 from Thanksgiving to Christmas. No "Frosty the Snowman" but great recordings of liturgical and traditional religious music for the holiday. Leagues above what one gets on broadcast channels. The one drawback is that it imitates the practice of celebrating Christmas before the holiday rather than from it to Epiphany.
ReplyDeleteAs a Brit I loved this although sadly I did find a few that are on the slide, parrticularly 1, 8 and 30. I find it more difficult every year to find a proper christmas card and even more difficult to find a proper advent calendar. Can also suggest 1 good American import. As a child of the 80s it wouldn't be Christmas without watching Home Alone!
ReplyDeleteYou're such an Anglophile! That's not a bad thing though.
ReplyDeleteIt's a long time since anyone round here went house to house singing carols, apart from two boys (different ones each time) who knock on the door and, when it's opened, strike up 'We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year' (just those lines) before extending their palms for money.
ReplyDeleteLast year (no one's come round this year, oddly:-)) I said that they could have some money if they sang a whole verse of Away in a Manger.
They couldn't.
I went house-to-house singing carols years ago. Let's do it again! It's still Christmas! It's Christmas for another week! I want one of those little hand-held Medieval pipe organs!
ReplyDeletei'd move to the UK for #18 alone!
ReplyDeleteThis post is spot on!! I lived there for three years and really do miss the simplicity.
ReplyDeleteI love all these things and do many of them.
ReplyDelete#1 - that music can make you pull your hair out! Try some classical radio stations for traditional hymns or do like I do; buy the cd's/tapes and play them all day long yourself!
#26 - sounds luscious! If ever I get to heaven, I'm hoping there's a medieval church in it! Nave, aisles, vaults, stained glass, crypts, secret places, the works!#30 - these are one of my special pet peeves. I mean, c'mon in this digital picture age, don't send me the kids on the card! That and the yearly friendly brag-letter -- I can't stand it!
Considering how under attack and receding it all is, you mean it's wus! stateside!!
ReplyDeleteOMG!
they won't let you, even in avillage, keep your decorations up till past twelth night:you get looks and remarks.
In my yuf it was only nontrad commerce who were so sniffy, tho decorations did rather tend to go newyearish.
And the holyspirt knows if it was amistake or not to shift Epiphany as a day of ob. for catholics to the nearest available sunday - all I know is what was lost, for the gain of an hour in bed or an hour later home to get to mass.
nice post!
PS
ReplyDeleteBrussles sprouts from Northeast bedfordshire are NOT nasty. Sprouts need the right microclimate and soiland farming(as above) and, despite being at their best if they have had a tinge of frost before picking, are very difficult to cook from frozen, unlike peas.
Pantossed with boiled chestnuts which is an art my family never mastered the getting the two together at the right moment, they can be superb.
Admittedly research done some years back showed a percentage minority of the population have a genetic (quirk? deficiency? advantage?) that allows tgheir taste to detect substances in the brassicas that pass by others undetected.
It has been hypothesized that this would be a survival trait in places(NOT Blighty, where brussels especially have historically meant winter survival for many, pre George 3rd only winterpickable fresh veg and source of vitamin C etc) , places where poisonous plants share some flavour characteristics with the cabbage family.
Yes Father Aunty Beeb still runs the two ronnies on Christmas day
ReplyDeleteEnglish Christmas cards all have robins (birds) on them. I don't know which part of England you found religious Christmas cards in, but it wasn't anywhere I'd been.
ReplyDeleteIn Cheshire they still do the medieval custom of hanging a miniature Christmas tree above the doors of the shops.
I was in Rome this Christmas, but we went to the Lessons and Carols service at the Anglican place just off the Via del Corso, and the instant we walked into that very English neo-Gothic church, smelled the mulled wine, we were transported back to the Old Country.
Once in Royal David City and mince pies, et al.
Oh, wait. I lie. I got some Christmas cards with Art Nouveau angels at a National Trust shop in Wales.
ReplyDelete