Christmas Traditions

Christmas is, traditionally, a time of traditions, both old and new.  It is possible, indeed desirable, to have new traditions and although social media can induce ultra short term nostalgia, may I suggest that we all agree that a tradition is based upon a length of time no shorter than an annual cycle.  Going to get your coffee from the same place every Sunday for a couple of months is not a tradition, it’s a habit, you addict.

You can certainly expand upon existing traditions.  My favourite Christmas traditions include switching off the television promptly as soon as the broadcast of ‘Carols from Kings’ begins, and enjoying ‘A Ghost Story for Christmas’ with a glass of port, just as the schoolboys in the charge of M R James used to do many Christmasses ago when he would invite them up to his rooms, give them alcohol and tell them disquieting stories.  Simpler, kinder, times.

If you are lucky enough to be spending Christmas with your family, you probably have your own traditions.  These can be the traditional ones of traditional games, like ‘Hunt the AAA Batteries’ or ‘Some Assembly Swearing’, they can also be ones that are unique to your nation, region, village, culture or indeed family.  Cherish especially the family traditions that appear so, so normal because everyone does them unthinkingly each year.  The first time you spend a Christmas in the company of another family is also the first time you realise that others might do stuff differently.  Surely it is a test of the manners of any gentleman not to scream ‘barbarians’ at anyone who does not stand for the start of The Queen, and who can forget that moment when you realised that a guest wasn’t joking about being a vegan and you hastily rinsed the duck fat roasted potatoes, beans, sprouts and carrots.

Walking into a room splashed with gore and remarking ‘you mean you don’t batter badgers on Christmas Day, but how do you keep down TB in this area, and what do you serve in butties later?’ might be unusual, but possibly no more so than rousing a guest early on Boxing Day and informing them they are about to hunt down and kill a fox, as is traditional in many villages and hamlets in England.  Fox hunting, on Boxing day or any other time of the year, never really took off in cities, which is a shame really because if there is one pest that needs controlled it’s an urban fox, and the sight of a pack of hounds and several dozen horses going full tilt through a pedestrianised city centre on the first day of the sales would I think we can all agree be unforgettable, no matter how much one subsequently tried.  A Christmas Day hunt is in and of itself a typically English tradition, it has everything the English love, it has posh people and posher ponies, it has dogs, it has a plucky underdog, well, underfox, and it has the voice of dissent in the form of hunt protestors.  All of whom probably meet up at a local country pub before the off, because no bugger is going to go tearing across the countryside and leap hedges when sober, that’s for sure.

The best traditions are, of course, the ones you make yourself.  Like making a Christmas playlist to drive to, ensuring that ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ is on what the radio folk like to call ‘heavy rotation’.

Of course, when creating a new tradition one should have a care, what if, years from now, your child spends their first Christmas with their loved one and their family and embarks on performing an action that has gone unremarked upon and unquestioned at home for years, ever since you first created that tradition.  Will it appear charming, or some weird shit that other folks will think one step away from a ritual?  If the latter, I recommend you go for it, traditions are mannerisms given legitimacy through longevity, no matter how weird.  Kissing under some mistletoe?  Try to invent that today, in the office, and explain it away as a charming festive idea you think will really catch on.

Crolling

Carolling, as distinct from wassailing which is like carolling only more fun because it involves cider, is a festive seasonal fixture of the Yuletide period, like new socks or being told by malicious kids in the playground that Father Christmas is really your dad.  A truly jaw dropping revelation because you thought your father worked in an office and if he is, in fact, Santa, then where the fuck is that new bike you’ve been lusting after for the last two years, and why are there not more reindeer milling about in the back garden, or on the roof?

Carolling is a seasonally appropriate activity.  If gangs of youths roamed the streets at any other time of the year, going from door to door and singing what are in effect folk songs, for money, then they would get abridged shrift.  Folk songs at other times of the year are anyway best confined to festivals where the seating is hay bales, or pub car parks where men who work in offices (secret Santas?) all week like to dress up in white, strap bells to their ankles, grab a stick and dance like nobody is watching.  Very much the case usually, as Morris dancing in a pub car park is the opposite of a fight in the same location, in that spectators rush from the car park to the security of the snug, rather than forming a circle round the protagonists and enjoying the only boxing that remains, literally, free to air.

The prospect of a group of children turning up on your doorstep January through November and giving an off-tune but spirited rendition of ‘Greensleeves’ before chapping the door and expecting a quid for their services is, thankfully, a remote one.  But come Christmas one can expect a small band of urchin singers to give an excellent demonstration of why their evenings are free at this time of year when any of their talented peers are practicing as choristers, through the medium of ‘song’.  A quid, or a bucket of water, are both ideal ways of dispersing the little darlings.

There are some who hold the opinion that ‘Christmas really starts’ when ‘Carols from Kings’ is broadcast by the BBC on Christmas Eve.  I can understand the attraction, a trinity of beloved establishments; the BBC, Christmas Eve, selective education, all coming together.  I myself consider that when ‘Carols from Kings’ comes on, it’s time to turn off the telly, make sure the sherry, mince pie and carrot are near the fireplace, and then go to bed to get in that all important one more sleep ‘till Christmas and, with any luck, a new Action Man.

Carolling starts a lot earlier than Christmas Eve, from about mid-December arrival at, or departure from, many a train station is enlivened by the sound of a group carolling for charity, be they singing or blowing enthusiastically into brass objects.  And it’s not just terminals.  Every Christmas for the last few years I’ve alighted at my local station, the sort of place where people stepping off the train are greeted by a spooky stationmaster who informs them that no train has stopped here for decades, to be confronted by Brownies singing ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’ and ‘Oh Little Town of Bethlehem’.  Sometimes simultaneously.

All for a good cause and, it has to be remarked, tremendously festive.

Christmas marks the time when one puts together a Christmas playlist.  Usually exactly the same as the one from last year, possibly reordered a bit, possibly with a new song added provided it meets the Christmas song requirements of sleighbells making an appearance somewhere.

‘Classical Christmas’ is a separate playlist consisting of songs from that CD you got free with a bottle of port a few years ago, and songs from that CD you bought in a moment of weakness because you thought it would be classy to decorate the tree to something festive that doesn’t feature an electric guitar, and which permits you to consider yourself ‘cultured’.

There may also be a CD of carols sung by a classical singer cashing in, featuring an album cover with her, or possibly him, in a frock with a plunging neckline.