What do you need to see, hear, end or whatever just because it’s what you always do at Christmas? We’ve done Christmas songs, we know that @Locust has an admirable tradition of reading A Christmas Carol up loud, maybe you watch Elf or Die Hard every year to mark the festive season. I dig out David Sedaris’ Holidays on Ice for the Santaland Diaries and this one, Six to Eight Black Men.
Your Christmas cultural traditions
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Watch Bad Santa. And this year Bad Santa 2 as well. Crude but a lot of fun for me and the Mrs. ALWAYS watch Bad Santa. The wife and kids do the same each year with Elf.
Always go to our local church for Christmas Eve carols.
I always make sure i have one alcoholic drink before midday on Christmas day (the only day i have a drink in the AM.) Turkey will be cooked already on Christmas Eve evening. Just the spuds and veg on Christmas Day.
Boxing day is pyjama day, finally get to look at/play with new toys. Just me, the wife and kids, nobody else. Family free/chilled out zone. Perfect!
Ooh and takeaway curry on New Years Eve, stay up to watch whatever is on TV, moan about Hootenanny and this year i see Niles Rodgers and Chic are seeing in new year on BBC1. Very happy about that choice!!
1. There are some films and tv shows my daughter and I always watch – Muppet Christmas Carol on Christmas Eve, Blackadder’s Christmas Carol and Home Alone 1 and 2 at some stage. Also…anyone else remember Bernard And The Genie with Lenny Henry? We always watch it although it is a copy of an old VHS tape and has never made it to DVD – it’s brilliant!
2. Christmas stockings first thing, then down to the beach for the swim. Sloe gin afterwards and then home for bacon rolls and bucks fizz. Presents, then get the dinner done. Games later and too much alcohol.
3. Boxing Day is bubble and squeak for a late brunch and then a walk…more alcohol and probably more games.
4. New Star Wars after Christmas some time.
Merry Christmas!
Me and my Dad have watched Scrooge (1970) on Christmas Eve afternoon every year for 30 years now – more than half of that time in different places. We text each other daft jokes while watching, gulping ale from ignorant glasses in front of different fires. It’s great.
It’s nobody else’s favourite version….but how can you not love a film where Anton Rodgers sings and dances on a coffin which is being carried aloft through the streets by four guys… balls of steel!
Deep in the kitchen, usually on Christmas Eve, I am locked in with something Mrs Path finds unlistenable, not so much a challenge these days. In the ear of that storm the ingredients slowly come together. From primordial sludge to primordial sludge emerges the Retro Yule Pate. What will I add this year to the butter-fried chicken livers? Shrooms? Smoked lardons or maybe those chorizo bits? All the ‘erbs in the fridge, a slug of something powerful, before the ingredients dance together into oblivion, processed into pulp. A slightly powdery pulp, yes? That perfect texture of dry moisture and wet slate.
Turkey? The wife does that.
For the past 9 years or so:
Christmas eve- Carols from King’s on the radio.
Secret late-night present wrapping in the spare bedroom- this means waiting until my son is fast asleep which is…..late.
Mince pie and milk for Santa, a carrot for the reindeer. My son still believes, which is half-charming and half-worrying. It also means getting up even earlier than usual to take a bite out of the mince pie , swig some milk and snap the carrot in half, disposing of one half, in an attempt to make it vaguely convincing. C’mon kid, work it out!
Present-opening together round the tree, in pyjamas (I like the idea of matching Christmas PJs but mystifyingly, my son does not agree).
The day itself- buggering off to the spare room to watch some Christmas telly and fall asleep (the others are not Christmas telly fans).
We used to do a Christmas Day walk in the local park but this too has fallen out of favour since he has been old enough to argue with me. I might insist on re-starting this as a Boxing Day tradition but I’m sure I will be defeated.
I like to think your son is only toying with you about Santa – he seems to have you firmly under control regarding PJs, walks and where you get to watch telly at Christmas!
Maybe- but the thing is, Santa is used as a brake on presents- ‘Santa can’t get you everything on the list!’ So it’s in his interests not to believe- ‘Amazon can get me everything on the list!’
Although I said the other week: ‘X is too expensive, you can’t have that’. Him: ‘But Santa can get it so it doesn’t cost anything’. Hmmmmmm.
My parents always told us that Santa’s presents aren’t free – he had to be paid. That might help!
Yeah and Mrs. Santa and the elves need paying, too. It’s a good idea but I am reluctant to maintain this lie much beyond his recent ninth birthday.
Mrs Santas’s doorstep loans: pay up or we’ll send the Elves round.
A recent development in Santa’s arsenal seems to be something called ‘elf on the shelf’, basically a small elf toy which is moved around when the children are absent to give the illusion of autonomy and who they are told acts as Santa’s snitch. Bad behaviour is spied on by the elf and reported back to the big man, who presumably then pulls out his ‘naughty or nice’ list and hovers over it with a pen and a thoughtful expression. Obedience through paranoia is hardly a new idea, but I find this version of it particularly creepy.
Does the Elf have a webcam?
The idea is that the elf effectively is a webcam, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some parents gathered evidence by using actual footage.
It’s just a thought, but couldn’t you do the pie/milk/carrot thing before you go to bed, rather than get up earlier?
He goes to sleep pretty late and I can’t risk getting caught with mince pie crumbs on my chin.
Also, mince pie for breakfast= win.
At 9 and believing in Santa…?! He is having you on…!
My mum used to say that the birds in the garden were Father Christmas’ informants, and my sister believed for years because she had convinced herself that she had woken up when he was there and had spied his black boots. That story still gets trotted out every year!
The clincher for our youngest a couple of years ago was still being awake to hear her grandad bellowing “Right – shall I have the mince pie then?”. There are upsides: it removes the need to hide particular rolls of wrapping, and they understand now why Santa prefers a decent single malt.
There are a few films which I always watch on the run-up: Muppet Christmas Carol, Die Hard, It’s A Wonderful Life.
Christmas isn’t really Christmas without my parents’ house and Gloucester Cathedral: it’s the Christmas Eve carol service in the Cathedral that really gets me into none-more-Christmassy mode. Then the kids putting mince pies and carrots and sherry by the fireplace. Christmas with children is just ace.
My folks have a very set routine on the day itself, which has remained more or less constant since I was a toddler: stocking presents by the fire at stupid o’clock in the morning –> breakfast (late discovery: grapefruit juice and prosecco, several of). Then they go off for the morning service while the turkey cooks. General loafing about and playing with presents while they’re out. Lethal cocktails when they get back, with the Hely-Hutchinson Carol Symphony as accompaniment. Lunch ends up starting about 2pm and lasts about 2-3 hours, then it’s tree presents.
By about 7-8, everyone is basically dead, and it’s telly and board games if anyone can be arsed. Sometime around 9 someone will suggest cold cuts and trifle and everyone’ll go “God no, I couldn’t eat another thing”, and by 10, everyone will have had cold cuts and trifle.
It’s ridiculous and decadent and unnecessarily set in stone and I bloody love it.
Wanna hear my prosecco moan? Course you do. When I first came to live in Italy it was a well known drink here and unheard of in UK. I loved it and bought a few bottles back to London with me one visit (you could do that then). I sort of had the half-hearted idea of seeing if I could start a prosecco import/export company. However I was totes put off my entrepreneurial ambitions on account of my family’s reaction. “Meh, s’alright I suppose, just fizzy wine, innit?” was the general consensus. Two of those family members are now among the many female ladyfolk I know whose very lives, and facebook pages, are dedicated to all things prosecco. I coulda made a fortune! My only consolation is the absolute certainty that I would have been too lazy to do anything even if it had gone down as well as I expected.
Muppet Christmas Carol is da bomb. I honestly think CD would have loved it.
We’re Marley and Marley…. Woooooohooooooo!
Carol Decker?
Festive THWACK!!
Totally agree. It’s the best Dickens adaptation ever filmed, because it’s the only one that’s ever captured his sense of humour.
Last year I backed into the neighbour’s car. Bit embarrassing. Hoping not to repeat that.
Surely I can’t be the only person here who just ignores Christmas? And I don’t mean in a depressed, lonely or curmudgeonly way. More like, IIRC, young Saucecraft said they do in Thailand. It just doesn’t enter my life. It’ll be a great day, but only cos all my days are great days.
I’m with you, Gary. I live on my own and have no family living close. I used to go to my mother’s until she died, so since then I’ve just let the rest of the world get on with it. About the only Xmas thing I bother with is the new Dr. Who special. If I’m really pushed, I might give the Waterson:Carthy seasonal album a listen.
Good chap, Count Jim. I’m off to Sardinia today for ten days to visit a friend who cares about Xmas as much as I do. She’s a bit hippy-ish. Spliff-a-go-go!
Christmas really starts on Christmas Eve when we go to the local Christingle service in the afternoon, our one quasi-religious attendance of the year. I don’t mind as long as they play In The Bleak Midwinter. Then a meal at our preferred local curry house (The Spice Merchant ) with a large group of families who live locally and who we got to know through our children going to same school – when we started this they were 5, now they are nursing shandies. Top tip parents: this means no washing up and everything ready for the cooking ahead.
The day itself starts with a smoked sausage breakfast, known as a pizzle, a curious family tradition. Then Christmas playlists while we cook lunch. No one but me really likes Christmas pudding, but as its our family recipe I insist (I cook two, one for my parents). We’ll play a game (this year Exploding Kittens – expecting good things) and watch Dr Who. Film and cold cuts in the evening. Sparkling wine all day long. Love it.
@rubyblue and others with youngers – its the one day of the year when Santa allows ‘unlimited screens’ !! Not so relevant when they’re 16, but its what Christmas was all about when they were 9.
‘Unlimited screens’ are for life, not just for Christmas.
A pizzle, eh? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzle
Yep. My father’s fond of the occasional recherche rude allusion.
Recherche Rude Allusion – TMFTL
* Day off at the movies with an old mate, circa mid December.
* New Star Wars flick, week before Xmas.
* Wrap presents in front of Die Hard.
* Always buy a couple of decent graphics novels to read over Xmas. Nothing will ever top revisiting Bone in 2012.
* Black tie Christmas carol service at the reform club.
* Family trip to see Home Alone at the cinema.
* A dear old pal of mine who I sometimes help out with work stuff generally sends a Fortnums hamper by way of thanks, so the bad eating starts early. Bloody hell, that food is amazing though.
* Work xmas party the week before Christmas, kids get to go tearing round my office. Generally get colleagues to call my phone so they can pretend they’re on conference calls.
* My nephew’s birthday is on the 23rd, so there’s generally a big knees up at my brother’s house. His in laws like a drink, so it generally gets messy.
* Christingle service on Xmas eve. Pub first, back to ours after.
* Before kids, I used to go for a long run on Christmas Day. Bit of time to think, and all that. Now it happens on Boxing Day. We also usually go to the Football if either Arsenal or the Rs are at home.
* Generally try to add at least one new song a year to the family Xmas playlist.
* Usually like to play a new video game over Xmas, in a tradition that dates back to childhood. This year it’s the new Zelda DLC, with the kids.
* Every year, Love Actually somehow happens, by hook or by crook. Ditto It’s A Wonderful Life, Scrooged, Lampoon, etc.
Merry Christmas everybody!
Tradition: Football, Boxing Day, 11 a.m. – which means rugby at 2 p.m.
I never do anything remotely public spirited if I can help it, I simply don’t like the public …
until this year, sort of.
Helping out at the Boxing Day evening dinner at the local hall.
Washing up. Sink is right next to the fridge. Fridge is always rammed with wine and beer for weddings/exhibitions/plays/events – various.
I’ve a feeling I’m going to get mighty thirsty over that sink.
Different strokes this year. A cottage in the Yorkshire Moors where we will be about 45 minutes from Mum’s care home. She is 93 and disappearing fast with Alzheimer’s (though to be honest what with the seven meals a day she is getting physically she looks the best she has for twenty years).
So, it will be Kings College carols, Bucks Fizz and open the stockings then a drive to the home where Mum will probably not recognise us and definitely forget the visit as soon as we leave. Turkey crown from Booths, all the trimmings and a few gallons of the finest wine known to mankind. Fall asleep in front of Its A Wonderful Life, wake up feeling peckish so time for ham and pickles, listen to Ella’s Swinging Christmas whilst sipping a wee dram. Boxing day walk which if the weather is inclement may only be the exhausting 5 minute trek to the village pub where we are promised “”The Windmill Girls” will regale us with seasonal tunes whilst we sup pints of local ale and decide, yes it’s only polite, that will be two steak and kidney pies when you are ready.
If it wasn’t for the severe case of man flu I have been carefully nurturing by sitting in the coldest church in all of France listening to Occitan carols for nearly two hours (I needed a team of burly men to lift me out of the frozen pew and seriously considered setting my permafrosted legs alight) I would say we are on for a spiffing Christmas!
Love and best wishes to all of you, especially Gary (thanks for the signed photo, Lady W is quite smitten).
Mwah! X
Used to have a Boxing Day tradition of going to see a local rugby match with my dad, that ended when he died in 87. We soldiered on having family Christmases until my mother’s last one in 2004. Then I moved to Canada, got married, had a child, got separated. Since then Christmas has been all over the place. No consistency, spending it in hotel rooms, even hospital one year. This year will be a new type, starting the day in one city (Ottawa) then flying to another in the afternoon (Toronto). Such are the complications/compromises of bringing up a child when the parents don’t live together.
Boxing Day – or sometimes the day after – is Lord of the Rings Day. I will watch all 3 films back to back (extended editions, of course). It’s fab. A relaxed, almost meditative experience after the Christmas hurly-burly.
I can imagine the would be a treat! I’m not a fan of LotR films but when the new Games Of Thrones box set arrived on Saturday we watched the lot in one go.
John Fahey; Christmas Guitar. Every year for many years now. Charms the pants of the most curmudgeonly grump and is the perfect backdrop to the day. Probably hear it several times over the beery bleary break, and then put to one side until this time next year. I have DH to thank for what has now become a fondly repeated musical Yuletide tradition at Foxy Fields.
Christmas does not officially start until the A Christmassy Ted has been on telly – which this year is on Thursday.
Usually I can get away with Bah-Humbugging a bit longer is it usually doesn’t make an appearance until Christmas Eve.
Only other “tradition” (expectation?) is that I will produce a Gantt Chart for the cooking of Christmas dinner.
As we haven’t yet decided what we are having, I have yet to fire up Microsoft Project.
No Gantt chart but there is the mother of all Excel spreadsheets setting out exactly how much of 50-odd ingredients are needed for the making of Christmas Pudding, Chocolate Pudding, Christmas Cake, Stollen and Lebkuchen to avoid the Christmas Eve ‘what do you mean there is no butter/vanilla essence/sultanas left’ cry.
Bah-humbugging? I think you will find it is Bah-humbuggery…..
No tradition other than self-indulgence. My Dad loved Christmas, in particular Christmas at home. He was a busy man much of the time. Not in the least lazy, he simply adored the idea of an abundance of nice things to give his family, a kitchen full of treats and a day given over to happy sloth.
I enjoyed that too. Having the whole day to do as you please with a pile of new stuff and close family around. And now, with my lot, that’s what I enjoy the most.
We’ve enjoyed a few Christmases away with friends with all sorts of different rules. No telly. No presents until the evening. A long walk before lunch. A long walk after lunch. All sorts of variations which have been thoroughly enjoyable.
But, in your own house with your own little set just lolling about, that’s Christmas bliss
Love and Death (one of his earlier funnier films) every Christmas Eve. rarely seen to the end;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeA-IJ2jY-o
I think our only surviving Xmas traditions are
1) Christmas morning fryup. The full (English) works.
2) My big sister and her daughter will have an argument.
3) Said daughter of big sis will have harsh words with her daughter.
4) Boxing Day walk, as we’re over at eldest nephew’s this year.
Not too many christmas traditions as such for me, although this year I’m hoping to start a couple – first taking part in Mini’s #vinylsanta exchange, the second is taking part in a Twitter reading group organised by the writer Rob McFarlane. We’re going to be reading Susan Cooper’s magnificent The Dark Is Rising starting (as the book does) on December 20th, Midwinters Eve.
Two great examples of social media being a force for good.
The Dark Is Rising is absolutely incredible. What a great book to start with.
Couldn’t resist. Just downloaded it, ready for tomorrow.
I’m adjusting to a whole new set of Christmas traditions, such as 35 deg heat, prawns, Boxing Day test etc. The Aussies won’t let go of the old ones, though – if you drive around after dark your senses are assaulted by more LCD Santas, sleighs, reindeer etc than you can shake a fairy wand at. Apparently someone’s going round our suburb cutting wires and trashing lights, which is not going down at all well with the light polluters. Someone who prefers the dark, presumably.
We had a thing in my past life which developed into a tradition, which was inviting all the members of our babysitting circle plus kids round to ours for drinks and presents on Christmas morning. Only after they’d all gone could I get on with cooking the unfortunate bird, as my mother-in-law called it, and the roasties, while dancing round my wife, who was cooking the rest of the veg and the veg option. But it was lovely having all the excited kids around.
By the time this had been going on for 20+ years I was getting increasingly restive: the ‘kids’ would all be hammered on margheritas in the back garden (a new sub-tradition), and a lot of the original marriages had broken up. Mysteriously, the divorced women had all replaced the originals with complete bores, and I often could be heard beforehand loudly wondering why it was necessary to fill our house with said bores every Christmas. We solved the problem by moving to Cornwall…;-)
Listen to the Cabin Pressure Christmas episode Molokai. I recommend the box set for anyone not familiar with Cabin Pressure
@biasbinding top Yeah Yeah Noh reference there
Yep, haven’t worked listening to Yeah Yeah Noh into the family Christmas traditions yet…
Not that many traditions to be honest apart from a pineapple for breakfast. Years ago, mum’s dad started bringing one back for Gran from the City where he worked . I guess they were fairly exotic then.
Oh, and someone will try and sneak one sprout onto my plate.Out sprout, out!
Otherwise too much food and booze and a growing feeling of unease despite being with the family.
Usually do something different each year. Last year hospital with the GLW.
If we’re at home then an old school friend is the priest in the next town, we usually go see him ‘at work’ at midnight mass (the family version at 6:30) which as he gives out chocolate to the children attending I manage to get some for myself.
The town also has the custom of ‘Tolling the Devil’s Knell’ which rings the bell Old Tom of Soothill for every year of Christ’s life.
Tradition normally means going round to my brother’s for the family Christmas, not drinking because I’m driving, and slipping away discreetly just as the board games start so we can crash in front of the telly and drink ourselves into oblivion.
This year we’ve got the keys to a friend’s cottage in North Wales – we are heading out tomorrow, probably back sometime in the New Year – just me, Mrs W and the dog. No internet and a lousy phone signal. Drink will be taken, food will be eaten and books will be read. The door will be locked and the log burner lit. We probably won’t see another soul for the duration. It will be FAB.
Another one of my own I should throw in – Thea’s Gilmore’s Christmas Party gig (London division). I was at this year’s show last night at the splendidly named Tooting Tram & Social. I’ll do a write up later seeing as it’s likely to be quiet where I am.
I lost my dad in October so this will be my first Christmas spent as an orphan, Boxing Day football won’t be the same without him.
Me and the GLW have a 15 year old tradition of a first-light birdwatching walk at one of the many bird reserves on the North Norfolk coast, then it’s home for a Bucks Fizz and a lazy day with the dogs. We don’t do presents or company on the day, Christmas dinner around 6ish then a few more drinks.
Long drive for me on Boxing Day to the footy while she has her family around then it’s back to normal really.