A Very British Christmas
A Very British Christmas
Christmas is every Brit’s favourite time of year, because it offers such ample opportunities to indulge in the national pastimes. Which are, in decreasing order of importance: grumbling, queueing, moaning about the weather, getting squeezed like pilchards onto an increasingly decrepit public transportation system, drinking warm beer, and making sarcastic comments.
This fantastic opportunity for griping and whinging comes but once a year, which is why the average Brit can be found in the shops in September, full of glee and anticipation, ready to enjoy the first genuine festive grump of the season.
Read on for a very British countdown to Boxing Day...
September
“I can’t believe it,” you hear one shopper saying to another as she stocks up on mince pies, which are on a buy one get one free (BOGOF) offer in Waitrose. “There are mince pies in the shop already. In September!”
“I know,” returns her friend, who has a trolley full of festive Quality Street chocolates, and ten bottles of Baileys, which is on special offer. “Tesco’s have got wrapping paper already. It seems to get earlier every year. Bloody marketing strategists.” She shakes her head at the outrageousness of it all, and tosses a pair of Heston Blumenthal’s Christmas Puddings into the mix.
"That's nothing!" says the first shopper. "Asdas have been selling Christmas Crackers since August!"
"Really? That's awful."
"There's a BOGOF offer on them."
"Oh? In the Watford branch? I must go and see if it's still on."
"No need. The ones in Sainsbury's are much better."
October
Your next clue that a British Christmas is on its way is when the Christmas music compilations start to be played everywhere, in an eager effort to encourage you to part with your cash. On the radio, in shops, urgh.
Noddy Holder starts singing “So here it is, Merry Christmas, everybody’s having fun.” No, it’s October, and everybody is miserable. Get it right, Noddy.
People start bragging that they have already finished all their Christmas shopping. The first tendrils of panic begin to slide round your heart.
November
People start saying “I’m not feeling very Christmassy yet. Are you feeling Christmassy?”
No, you huff, because “Christmassy” is neither a sensation nor an emotion, and also because it’s only the 15th of November.
The next milestone to be greeted with eager anticipation is when a minor celebrity turns on the Christmas Lights in your town. A brass band plays Christmas carols. Everyone drinks shed loads of mulled wine, eats shed loads of mince pies, and moans about the road closures, the traffic, and the fact that the weather is getting cold, and isn’t it getting dark early? As if this doesn’t happen every year.
The Daily Mail has a horror story about a primary school not being allowed to have a nativity play, because of political correctness gone mad.
People start declaring that they are not sending Christmas cards this year, because of the shocking price of postage. Relieved, you agree not to send Christmas cards either.
The Daily Mail has a horror story about a city council banning Christmas, and rebranding it “holiday”, because of political correctness gone mad. Your elderly relatives quote this article to you as an example of why the multicultural society isn’t working.
The Guardian has an article quoting loads of Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus pointing out that they love celebrating Christmas, get a grip.
Your child gives your elderly relative a home-made Divali candle-holder, and sings “let’s celebrate Divali nights,” and you almost die of pride. Take that, xenophobic, Daily-Mail-reading elderly person, you think.
December
You open the first window on your advent calendar, chomp on a "malteser," and find yourself feeling Christmassy.
The queues start getting longer as the shopping gets more and more frenzied. Brits don’t mind queueing, what they don’t like are bloody foreigners barging to the front of the queue, which is just not cricket.
Somewhere around mid-December you start getting a flurry of Christmas cards from all the people who said they wouldn’t be sending cards this year. The non-reciprocation guilt begins.
The terror of non-reciprocation guilt drives elderly aunts into a frenzy of biscuit-buying “just in case”. You find yourself buying Christmas Cards. You miss the 2nd class post deadline, so end up sending a whole load of cards first class, which costs an absolute fortune. You curse the people who told you they weren’t sending cards this year.
The Daily Mail has a horror story about foreigners/gays/women/people who walk funny/disabled scroungers/welfare claimants/animal rights activists/people who wear hoodies/young people/short people/people with suspicious-looking eyes doctoring “our” mince pies, because of political correctness gone mad.
The TV schedule is announced. It includes: A Doctor Who Christmas Special, a Miranda Christmas Special, The Italian Job, The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, The Great Escape, and a Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special from the 1970s which everyone agrees is probably going to be the highlight.
The best thing on telly over Christmas is always the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. The second best thing is the finale of Strictly Come Dancing. But no-one’s watching these things, because it’s much funnier watching Ant and Dec taking the piss out of a z-list celebrity being showered by cockroaches while they eat a kangaroo penis in “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!”
You get a card from a university friend that contains a 15-page 8-point-font essay on the enormous success that they’ve made of their life in the last year, the fact that their bright-eyed beautiful kids have all got straight A’s, places at Cambridge, have raised £6000 for charity, and are playing rugby for the England under-21s. You eye the burpy, farty, argumentative, lazy, lounging lumps who inhabit your sofa, and use the essay to light a bonfire.
Christmas Eve
The BBC kills one of your favourite ever characters and consigns the other to an eternity of everlasting grief and heartbreak, thus making you and all your kids cry.
You think you’ll never enjoy Christmas again. Thank you BBC.
Christmas Day
A perky, religious, sober relative bangs on about the “real meaning of Christmas.” Another more non-conformist relative points out that the Church merely hijacked the original much more fun pagan festival. Eventually everyone ends up going to church just to prevent a nasty fight. The kids smuggle their presents in, eat all their Christmas chocolate and are sick in the aisle.
There is turkey, Brussels sprouts, chestnut stuffing, chipolatas, roast potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, pigs-in-blankets, sausagemeat stuffinfg, and for pudding Christmas pudding, or mince pies, with brandy butter. There is gin, wine, port, brandy and whiskey.
An elderly relative moans about the fact that there is no sixpence in the Christmas Pud any more. Another reminisces about now-deceased relatives who choked to death on sixpences.
You think you will explode if you eat any more.
Everyone exchanges Christmas crackers, each of which contains lame gifts, a very unfunny joke, and a paper hat is either much too big or much too small for a normal human head. The entire family is drunk enough to wear the hat for a traditional afternoon walk round the town.
At least one present is broken before it even gets unwrapped.
You spend £1000 quid on presents. You receive only a £10 Argos voucher and a pair of slippers that don’t fit you, but get requisitioned by your son, even though they are lurid leopardskin print.
Someone insists on listening to the Queen’s speech at 3pm. The rest of the family has a nice nap.
The much-anticipated Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special is disappointingly unfunny.
Boxing Day
A reprise of Christmas Day with different relatives, more booze and without all the religious bollocks.
So, there it is. A very British Christmas.
Happy holidays.
Camelittle
Christmas is every Brit’s favourite time of year, because it offers such ample opportunities to indulge in the national pastimes. Which are, in decreasing order of importance: grumbling, queueing, moaning about the weather, getting squeezed like pilchards onto an increasingly decrepit public transportation system, drinking warm beer, and making sarcastic comments.
This fantastic opportunity for griping and whinging comes but once a year, which is why the average Brit can be found in the shops in September, full of glee and anticipation, ready to enjoy the first genuine festive grump of the season.
Read on for a very British countdown to Boxing Day...
September
“I can’t believe it,” you hear one shopper saying to another as she stocks up on mince pies, which are on a buy one get one free (BOGOF) offer in Waitrose. “There are mince pies in the shop already. In September!”
“I know,” returns her friend, who has a trolley full of festive Quality Street chocolates, and ten bottles of Baileys, which is on special offer. “Tesco’s have got wrapping paper already. It seems to get earlier every year. Bloody marketing strategists.” She shakes her head at the outrageousness of it all, and tosses a pair of Heston Blumenthal’s Christmas Puddings into the mix.
"That's nothing!" says the first shopper. "Asdas have been selling Christmas Crackers since August!"
"Really? That's awful."
"There's a BOGOF offer on them."
"Oh? In the Watford branch? I must go and see if it's still on."
"No need. The ones in Sainsbury's are much better."
October
Your next clue that a British Christmas is on its way is when the Christmas music compilations start to be played everywhere, in an eager effort to encourage you to part with your cash. On the radio, in shops, urgh.
Noddy Holder starts singing “So here it is, Merry Christmas, everybody’s having fun.” No, it’s October, and everybody is miserable. Get it right, Noddy.
People start bragging that they have already finished all their Christmas shopping. The first tendrils of panic begin to slide round your heart.
November
People start saying “I’m not feeling very Christmassy yet. Are you feeling Christmassy?”
No, you huff, because “Christmassy” is neither a sensation nor an emotion, and also because it’s only the 15th of November.
The next milestone to be greeted with eager anticipation is when a minor celebrity turns on the Christmas Lights in your town. A brass band plays Christmas carols. Everyone drinks shed loads of mulled wine, eats shed loads of mince pies, and moans about the road closures, the traffic, and the fact that the weather is getting cold, and isn’t it getting dark early? As if this doesn’t happen every year.
The Daily Mail has a horror story about a primary school not being allowed to have a nativity play, because of political correctness gone mad.
People start declaring that they are not sending Christmas cards this year, because of the shocking price of postage. Relieved, you agree not to send Christmas cards either.
The Daily Mail has a horror story about a city council banning Christmas, and rebranding it “holiday”, because of political correctness gone mad. Your elderly relatives quote this article to you as an example of why the multicultural society isn’t working.
The Guardian has an article quoting loads of Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus pointing out that they love celebrating Christmas, get a grip.
Your child gives your elderly relative a home-made Divali candle-holder, and sings “let’s celebrate Divali nights,” and you almost die of pride. Take that, xenophobic, Daily-Mail-reading elderly person, you think.
December
You open the first window on your advent calendar, chomp on a "malteser," and find yourself feeling Christmassy.
The queues start getting longer as the shopping gets more and more frenzied. Brits don’t mind queueing, what they don’t like are bloody foreigners barging to the front of the queue, which is just not cricket.
Somewhere around mid-December you start getting a flurry of Christmas cards from all the people who said they wouldn’t be sending cards this year. The non-reciprocation guilt begins.
The terror of non-reciprocation guilt drives elderly aunts into a frenzy of biscuit-buying “just in case”. You find yourself buying Christmas Cards. You miss the 2nd class post deadline, so end up sending a whole load of cards first class, which costs an absolute fortune. You curse the people who told you they weren’t sending cards this year.
The Daily Mail has a horror story about foreigners/gays/women/people who walk funny/disabled scroungers/welfare claimants/animal rights activists/people who wear hoodies/young people/short people/people with suspicious-looking eyes doctoring “our” mince pies, because of political correctness gone mad.
The TV schedule is announced. It includes: A Doctor Who Christmas Special, a Miranda Christmas Special, The Italian Job, The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, The Great Escape, and a Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special from the 1970s which everyone agrees is probably going to be the highlight.
The best thing on telly over Christmas is always the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. The second best thing is the finale of Strictly Come Dancing. But no-one’s watching these things, because it’s much funnier watching Ant and Dec taking the piss out of a z-list celebrity being showered by cockroaches while they eat a kangaroo penis in “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!”
You get a card from a university friend that contains a 15-page 8-point-font essay on the enormous success that they’ve made of their life in the last year, the fact that their bright-eyed beautiful kids have all got straight A’s, places at Cambridge, have raised £6000 for charity, and are playing rugby for the England under-21s. You eye the burpy, farty, argumentative, lazy, lounging lumps who inhabit your sofa, and use the essay to light a bonfire.
Christmas Eve
The BBC kills one of your favourite ever characters and consigns the other to an eternity of everlasting grief and heartbreak, thus making you and all your kids cry.
You think you’ll never enjoy Christmas again. Thank you BBC.
Christmas Day
A perky, religious, sober relative bangs on about the “real meaning of Christmas.” Another more non-conformist relative points out that the Church merely hijacked the original much more fun pagan festival. Eventually everyone ends up going to church just to prevent a nasty fight. The kids smuggle their presents in, eat all their Christmas chocolate and are sick in the aisle.
There is turkey, Brussels sprouts, chestnut stuffing, chipolatas, roast potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, pigs-in-blankets, sausagemeat stuffinfg, and for pudding Christmas pudding, or mince pies, with brandy butter. There is gin, wine, port, brandy and whiskey.
An elderly relative moans about the fact that there is no sixpence in the Christmas Pud any more. Another reminisces about now-deceased relatives who choked to death on sixpences.
You think you will explode if you eat any more.
Everyone exchanges Christmas crackers, each of which contains lame gifts, a very unfunny joke, and a paper hat is either much too big or much too small for a normal human head. The entire family is drunk enough to wear the hat for a traditional afternoon walk round the town.
At least one present is broken before it even gets unwrapped.
You spend £1000 quid on presents. You receive only a £10 Argos voucher and a pair of slippers that don’t fit you, but get requisitioned by your son, even though they are lurid leopardskin print.
Someone insists on listening to the Queen’s speech at 3pm. The rest of the family has a nice nap.
The much-anticipated Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special is disappointingly unfunny.
Boxing Day
A reprise of Christmas Day with different relatives, more booze and without all the religious bollocks.
So, there it is. A very British Christmas.
Happy holidays.
Camelittle