Where are our British Christmas traditions going?

[RabbitsNBears]

I can’t help but feel ever so sad about the wonderful Christmas traditions we grew up with are disappearing. It's like we are raising our young ones in the USA. Who is “Santa”? In my day he was called Father Christmas. What is this elf on the shelf nonsense, as far as I can tell he teaches our grandchildren that misbehaving is amusing, not the old fashioned lessons of behaving as Father Christmas knows if you’ve been good or bad. And don’t even get me started on how my DIL had the grandchildren leaving “Santa” cookies and milk. What’s wrong with a glass of brandy and a mince pie?

I can see why it's a bit sad to not see your traditions passed on - but that's something to talk about with your DIL, not presume all English Christmas tradition are disappearing. Plenty still go on.

It's also sad that your nanna enforced her traditions and perspective with violence, or at least the threat of hitting you, especially over something so slight.

I was raised with both violence and threats of it over the idea of how Christmas 'should' be, how it was perceived mattering more than how it felt. It felt like a performance, one I stopped participating in at all as a teenager.

My in-laws were fine with this until my DH and I started having kids. We had a rough few years until we could get past our own defensiveness and talk about how we could bring our ideas of what we wanted to share with the kids together.

I still think Father Christmas would find milk that's been sat out for 4 hours and slightly tepid revolting and would surely cause travel sickness.

Quite possible, I agree it doesn't sound nice, but drinking tepid brandy - or any other alcohol - that's been sitting out for 4 hours isn't great sounding either, and even drunk 'fresh', alcohol is far more likely to lead to hypothermia if we presume the drinks impact him and not neutralised by ~magic~.

Bring back the stocks

Growing up:

mum, born 1950s, south Wales - Father Christmas
Dad, born 1940s, Birmingham - Santa.

School 80s/90s was a 50:50 split.

becoming Americanised is not gaining more culture - it’s the pits of western culture. Long live Europe.

Agee OP. We already had to adopt trick or treating and making a huge thing out of Halloween because of the Americans. Most of our news acts like we live in America-the whole thing about Charlie Kirk when 3/4 of the country had never heard of him and I bet he was covered more over here than the Queen's death was over there! Wouldn't surprise me if they start bringing in Thanksgiving over here next.

They took over all our chocolate and ruined it which is unforgiveable.

and who wants a boring old biscuit they could have any day of the year when delicious mince pies are on offer!

Me!
I don't like mince pies.
Give me a biscuit or a big cookie any day of the week.

You'd heard that different people have different tastes, right ?

Yep I'm 55 and he was always Santa to me. Glaswegian here .

You do realise it was Scottish and Irish people who took guising to America... It's not an "American" tradition at all.

@MannersAreAll they definitely ran with it though and made it into such a big thing.

Clearly you've never been to the parts of Scotland that go big on guising... It was such a huge thing when I was a child that I once still had sweets left for my play piece in March!

It's not an American tradition. It's a Scottish and Irish tradition.

It's ridiculously rude when some English people feel the need to ignore the fact that British traditions and English traditions are not actually the same thing.

I'm not ignoring it or being rude to the Scottish or Irish I didn't know, I've actually never heard of guising so I didn't refer to it I referred to trick or treating. It only proves my point though that America is such a huge influence that it never was a big thing in England until the Americans adopted it.

Also this-

Yes, the modern American-style "trick-or-treating" was largely imported to the UK from the US, especially popularizing in the 1980s via TV and movies like E.T., despite Halloween's older Celtic roots in the UK and Ireland which involved traditions like "souling" and "guising" (dressing up, performing for food) that the American version evolved from. While Britain has ancient Halloween customs, the specific practice of knocking doors shouting "trick or treat" is a distinctly North American import that became widespread in England later.

It only proves my point though that America is such a huge influence that it never was a big thing in England until the Americans adopted it.

The point is that the Op, who you agreed with, was complaining about British traditions being lost.

This is a British tradition. Just not an English tradition.

Knocking on doors is very much part of guising. You knock and perform your trick to get your treat. That's where the phrase comes from

Goodness another America bashing post. I’m on other forums and I never come across Americans bashing the British like on this site. It’s baffling. So would you be ok if some other country’s traditions were creeping in or is it just American ones? I think it’s great that times are changing and traditions are evolving to include other groups/cultures.

It’s never been Father Christmas where I’m from

That sounds so strange to me!

Its always been Santa here

My 34 and 15 year old know him as Father Christmas, in fact my town has lots of places to go and meet Father Christmas, so lots of little ones are growing up knowing him as that, so I certainly expect future generations will nit be confused at all.

Surely with your fun-loving pleasant nature you’ve made Christmas so magical that your family follow the same traditions as always?

I wouldn’t worry about what others do.

Nearly 50, born in Scotland, always called him Santa…..

Don't be ridiculous. Everyone does Christmas differently and that's fine. My kids say father Christmas and I've never done elf on the shelf. We've got our own family traditions.. carols on Christmas eve, a walk around the lake on boxing day.
People should do what they enjoy and is meaningful to them. Doesn't matter if its 'british' or not.. why would that matter?

Santa vs Father Christmas is regional. I still say Father Christmas but grew up (down south) hearing both.

We leave out sherry, a carrot and a mince pie.

We don’t do the elf.

It's secret santa as well creeping into UK present giving. Stuff you only ever heard of watching American 90s TV shows-now we have to do it.

Ha the Americans just don't give enough of a crap to even care about us. I was actually taken aback by their views on reddit. They think we're completely irrelevant is what I came away with.

I'm in my Fifties. Always been Santa for me, in the south east. Might have been FC when very young, but I don't remember. I think we did put out sherry and mince pie for Mum Santa. But we always put carrot out for the reindeer, too. Shame on people who don't do that.

Don't like mince pies? Wow. Just wow. Next you'll be dissing Christmas cake!

I think everyone who doesn't like turkey and mince pies should be put onto a log and pushed out to sea, among the ice floes.

And no, I am not being unreasonable! 😂

I find mince pies, Christmas cake and pudding rather ho hum while there is sticky toffee pudding, lemon curd sponge cake and chocolate cheesecake in the world.

They were designed to be super filling when meat was scarce and there is no need. The last thing I want after a generous roast dinner is a suet pudding.

I agree with you OP. I’m not a fan of elf on the shelf or a gift box on Christmas Eve (which seemed a big thing a few years ago, not sure if it still is?) so we do neither in our house. Christmas for my DC is very similar to mine when I was a child.

The dyslexic devil-worshippers and pet-fanciers have taken over Amercanised xmas here in Australia too.

They urge us to watch out for SATAN 'driving' a sleigh on xmas eve and to read the bible to be up to date on DOG's works around the planet.