English Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone! We hope everyone is having a happy, healthy day with their friends, families, lovers, pets, or patients.

I thought I would take this time to discuss the various traditional aspects of English Christmas. If I don't make a list my posts tend to get a little out of control, so I'm going to talk about the top 5 aspects of English Christmas.

1. Mince pie and mulled wine. Even excluding the German Glühwein that populates the Christmas markets, mulled wine is everywhere. At pubs, at concerts, at workplace Christmas parties. And it's a good thing, too: this December stands to be the coldest December in England since they started recording these things in 1910. Just another good reason they started to refer to the phenomenon as "climate change" rather than "global warming". As for the mince pies, this is a sweet pie, filled with cooked fruit and spices. I've mostly seen them as individual sized pies. As a sign of how ubiquitous they are around Christmas time, they were giving them away for free at a concert we went to on the 16th, are there always seemed to be extra pies in the office kitchen last week.

2. Christmas crackers. Not as in, crackers you put cheese on, but crackers that you pull each side and they make a loud "crack!" (or "Boom!"). There's also a paper crown inside each one, that the puller then wears, possibly for the rest of the evening. We got crackers at the concert (in addition to mince pies), and many people were wearing their crowns all night. We watched highlights of Christmas TV last night (see "Television", below), and many scenes involved families in paper crowns. Yesterday on the tube we saw lots of people carrying large bags of presents, many of them with boxes of crackers in them. We've also seen the crackers used as decorations on trees on a few occasions. You get the idea: no Christmas without crackers!

3. The meal. The American food-related holiday of the year is Thanksgiving: in England, it is Christmas. And much like our Thanksgiving, it is much-anticipated, and it usually consists of turkey (or the slightly more old-fashion goose), potato, and several kinds of "veg". Brussels sprouts are one of the traditional vegetables - whether cauliflower is traditional or not is a matter of some debate. Another classic part of the meal is something called bread sauce. I think it's safe to say that it's things like this that give British food a bad name.

4. Panto. It's hard to describe exactly what panto (short for pantomime) is. As a genre of entertainment it's part musical theater, part stand-up comedy, part pop-remix. And there is audience participation. The show is always based on a standard fairy tale (we saw Snow White, and 6 years ago Danny saw Aladdin), but they add in funny characters, such as "Muddles", the court jester who was sort of the "host" of Snow White, or a random old lady called "Widow Twankey" in Aladdin who Danny saw played by the great Ian McKellan. The audience is always meant to Boo the evil characters, to warn people when there is mischief afoot, and to engage in call and reply (as in "Don't you think I'm the fairest in the land?" "Noooo!" "Oh, yes I am!" "Oh, no you're not!" and so on). It's geared towards kids, although there are plenty of double-entendres for the adults in the audience. The songs are always re-writes of famous pop songs, of just pop songs performed straight up (our show ended with "Don't stop Believin'). All in all, it's pretty entertaining.

5. Television. Seeing as the tube is not running (!!! The entire London transport system is shut down today!) and I'm recovering from a cold, we've spent much of Christmas and Christmas eve eating yummy food, drinking tea and watching TV. This has included the Festival of 9 Lessons and Carols, featuring the King's College choir from University of Cambridge. The classically English aspects of this show are the fact that is a religious program on the main BBC channel, and the fact that the King's college choir is made up of only boys and young men. Then perhaps there's nothing more English than the Queen's Christmas message. This year she spoke of the great teamwork involved in writing the King James bible...which is similar to the teamwork involved in sports. And this teamwork can be great for building community atmosphere and self confidence. Naturally. There is also the address of the Archbishop of Canterbury - this year he suggested that perhaps the upper class aren't doing their share to get us through this economic downturn (!). Of course non-religious and non-royal television programming also exists. Just like in the US, most sitcoms have a Christmas episode, and most comedy shows (of which there are more in England) have some Christmas-themed sketches. We had the pleasure of watching the second half of "top-25 TV Christmas moments" last night. Many of them came from soap operas ("Coronation Street" and "East Enders"), some from sitcoms ("The Royle Family" seems to be favorite, as is "Gavin and Stacey"), one was from the classic "The Two Ronnies". Number three was from the much-loved "Vicar of Dibley", when the vicar is invited to about 5 or 6 homes after the service, and she is forced to eat 5 or 6 full Christmas dinners, brussels sprouts and all. Number one, naturally, was The Office Christmas episode, when (spoiler alert!) Tim finally leaves with Dawn. Though no mention of Mr. Bean's Christmas, sadly.


Lastly, I was under the impression that everyone in Britain said "Happy Christmas", though it turns out that, although many people still say this, many other have reverted to the American "Merry Christmas." Or at least, many signs and adverts use the expression "Merry Christmas." Well, that's all I've got for now. We're about to embark on making a carrot, squash and blue cheese tart, as usual inspired by Ottolenghi.

So, Happy Christmas everyone...and don't forget the 4th Ashes test starts tonight - 6:30pm EST!