🇬🇧🎄 UK CHRISTMAS FACTS - MY TOP 10 🎄🇬🇧
Hello my friends! Christmas is just around the corner and for us Brits, it's probably the most important day of the year for us. So I thought about putting together a list of the TEN facts that make Christmas ever more christmassy; facts which you can impress students and family members with 😁
🎄 FACT 1
👉🏻 We all have ADVENT CALENDARS hanging on the walls at home. The thing has 24 carboard doors and we open the 1st on, surprise surprise, 1st December. The last door is on the 24th. And behind every door there are little chocolates (you can get advent calendars with miniature alcohol bottles😁). Extra fact ‼ When I was young, I usually ate all the chocolates by 5th December and had to go without till Christmas. 🙈
🎄 FACT 2
👉🏻 We open presents on the morning of the 25th unlike our European neighbours who open theirs in the afternoon of the 24th... which I always considered a bit weird. Kids usually wake up bloody early to unwrap their prezzies that Father Christmas brought them. Our parents at the time were like zombies as many families are still wrapping up presents to the early hours of the 25th😂 Yes mum and dad, talking about YOU!
🎄 FACT 3
👉🏻 On the night of the 24th, we leave a glass of brandy and a mince pie on the mantlepiece for Father Christmas in order to express our thanks for our awesome prezzies. As kids, we always checked to see it Father Christmas (aka my dad which I found out later much to my distress) had emptied the glass and ate every crumb.
🎄 FACT 4
👉🏻 BOXING DAY, 26th December. This is still a big day for us and allows us to get even fatter. How we celebrate this depends on the family; some have a calm day in but still open more presents, other families visit other relatives and have a 2nd Christmas meal. I believe if you asked us Brits about the history of Boxing Day, 75% wouldn't know or think it was invented by Mike Tyson.
🎄 FACT 5
👉🏻 Every Christmas meal starts with PULLING CHRISTMAS CRACKERS. No, it's not some Finncrisp product. It's a tube of card and paper containing a paper crown (symbolic of the 3 kings, a pathetic lame joke and some novelty toy, or tat, often keyrings). We pull either end of the cracker and when it breaks, the person with the bigger piece wins what's inside. No Christmas is complete without Christmas crackers and our older relatives think it's fun to wear these paper crowns for the rest of the day. Bless them!😁🙌🏻
🎄 FACT 6
👉🏻 CHRISTMAS PUDDING isn't some vanilla yoghurt; that would be quite depressing. It's a round pile of sweet dried-fruit, bread, and suet. Then we set fire to it and all go: ohhhhh wowwwwww! Yes, before serving it, we poor brandy on the cake and light it. If you want to be super traditional, you might find a coin in the cake. If you were served a piece with the coin, it symbolized fortune and luck for the coming year. I think in 2022, Health and Safety don't recommend putting cash in food... (I hate X-mas pud BTW!)
🎄 FACT 7
👉🏻 Staying with food, MINCE PIES! The modern mince pie contains a mixture of suet, spices and dried fruit in short crust pastry. Bloody delicious! Years ago they did contain meat but not anymore. Just like Christmas pudding, we often serve MINCE PIES with CUSTARD which is sooooooooo British: a kind of hot vanilla sauce! (If you want to make this in Russia, get Russian vanilla pudding, pour it in a pan, add some milk, heat it, keep stirring until hot and pour it on your dessert)🤩
🎄 FACT 8
👉🏻 Every family has their own Christmas film they watch on Christmas Day (or Boxing Day). My family liked to watch Indiana Jones... every bloody year! Then we'd watch the Queen's speech and open more presents. We don't have anything resembling that Russian New Year Film: The Irony of Fate, where some woman falls in love with some random alcoholic who broke into her flat and doesn't either call the cops or stab him to death, all within a few minutes.
🎄 FACT 9
👉🏻 Most primary schools put on a NATIVITY PLAY in December where kids perform the whole Jesus story in front of parents. But due to modern political correctness, many schools don't allow parents to take pics or film their kids, and some schools have banned nativity plays altogether.
🎄 FACT 10
👉🏻 The CHRISTMAS PANTO (pantomime). It's a traditional treat for families to see these plays in theaters up and down the country. The play is usually about some fairytale with gender-crossing actors e.g. Peter Pan is played by a woman and the Fairy Godmother played by a man, all usually TV celebrities. There's singing, slapstick and madness. All kids scream 'He's behind you!' when the villain creeps up on the hero. Ahhh memories! By the time I was 11, I try to avoid going because I felt I was too cool for them.
🥳 There you go guys! How many of these facts did you know? Let me know below! 🤗
