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?

You're just seeing the crappy commercial stuff! Different parts of America have wonderful culture. There are amazing cooking and holiday/hosting traditions in the South, and French-Creole-Cajun traditions in the New Orleans area, a whole other culture in the Appalachians, and different again in Tennessee and Kentucky. The latter has a lot of horse mysticism. As an example, lots of people have horse shoes hung in their houses, but they must hang in a U shape, not the other way round, or all your luck will drain out. Then there's Native American culture. I've just scratched the surface here.

Your comment is very ignorant and typical of someone who does not know North America AT ALL!

I leave out a bottle of Brandy and a couple of lines of coke for Santa.

Just as a little “livener” to get him through the night.

Are you aware of the concept of time? It passes and over the course of it passing things change. I’ll give you an example, when you were younger and had to moan about things you had to get either send a letter, seal it with wax and have it delivered via horseback to your friends or perhaps arrange to meet at the nearest tea shop and have a local pleasant girl serve traditional English tea, in traditional English tea cups (ironically made from china that isn’t English) with good old English biscuits but now you can do it on the internet instead.

I’m 32, it’s always been Santa. I find only either much older or pretentious people call him FC. Anyone born past 1980 ish has grown up with prominent Americanised culture thanks to MTV and Hollywood. It’s ok for this to happen, cultures and traditions evolve and Americans aren’t evil.

Leaving cookies and milk out is kinder for both Santa and the parents who have to consume them! Brandy is disgusting and not everyone is fond of mince pies.

Plenty of British children are brought up with Father Christmas being left mince pies and a glass of something a lot stronger than milk. U do think access to American streaming has accelerated the trend tou have noticed though.

Your point is valid but China clay (kaolin) comes from Cornwall. It got its nickname ‘china’ from imported Chinese teacups in the 17th century but it was mostly made in England by the 18th century and the cups evolved handles and got larger. Just like the tea itself is totally different from Chinese tea.

Clay Country, the absolutely stunning place known as St Austell.

Elf on the shelf is a creepy little fuck. We had Father Christmas growing up and I also feel the Americanisms annoying me somewhat. What I find hilarious is that half this country currently banging on about our culture being diluted and being taken over by Islam (it’s not) whilst not noticing how we are basically American now. And don’t get me started on Halloween or these 1st of December boxes for kids. Now I need to go and find the Bird’s Trifle and touch some tinsel to calm down

Agree that elf on the shelf is shite.

No idea where 1st of December boxes or Christmas Eve boxes originated but it seems to be an English thing. I never heard any of my pupils mention them in Scotland.

I'm 31 and Scottish
He was always Santa to me

No mince pies left out cos they are the devils food. Why would I buy mince pies just to bin them. Nobody else eats them so it really would be a waste.
In my 11 years of doing Santa I've always left out cookies, because I will eat them

I hate Elf on the Shelf. Thankfully my DC didn’t really care about it that much, which is just as well as I was too lazy busy to be arsed with it. I also hate the new popularity of the Grinch, but thankfully my DC are past the age of it being a thing for them.

I grew up in the seventies and my mum always said Father Christmas and my dad always said Santa Claus. My siblings and I called him Santa. We’re in NI and it was pretty much accepted among children that he was Santa. We never left out anything for him. I only heard of people doing that when I got older, but I’m sure loads did. We did it with our DC and they loved it. Well, DS1 did. DS2 was a bit eye rolly about most things from a very young age. Still is🤣 One thing my children have missed out on is carol singing. I used to love it. But DP and I are atheists, so the only hymn and carol singing our children have come across is in school and that is very limited. Even though I don’t believe in God, carol singing still makes me very emotional. It was huge in both my primary and grammar school and also I attended gazillions of church events. My children will just have their own different memories of Christmas. My eldest is 17 now and sometimes mentions a fond memory of Christmas when he was small and it’s different from my childhood experience, but lovely to him.

Surely Santa/Father Christmas gets whatever you want to eat/drink? Wouldn't make much sense for it to be brandy in a teetotal house for example. And don't forget carrot for reindeer 😆

I'm 33 and always said Santa, as did my friends , teachers etc. Maybe Santa was used In Scotland earlier than England 🤷‍♀️?

Yes, Rudolph needs his fuel. I always seemed to get the job of leaving teeth marks on the carrot (the things we had to do to convince DS2 that we weren’t making it up, even though we were🤣🤣) Not sure what it says about the shape of my teeth.

@notcomfortable re mince pies. I'm Scottish too but lived in England for a while. The first time anyone offered me a mince pie with a cup of tea I declined as I imagined what they'd call a Scotch pie.

To us the Christmas one have always been mincemeat pies.

Americans are noticing British influence there too. It’s inescapable because we speak the same language and share the same ancestry so celebrate the same events. we each make the influence from the other our own though. UK Halloween fancy dress is much darker than the US - witches, blood and gore dominate. In America anything goes - celebrities like Elvis or characters like Dorothy are commonplace without any macabre edge to them.

My mother is Scottish and always made her own mincemeat for mincepies. All fruit and spices. The only animal product is the suet. I now do the same. It’s my grandmother’s recipe. Possibly older. We make it in the autumn with apples from the garden.

And tea is really big in Scotland. My Scottish relatives got my husband addicted to tea by giving him about 10 cups a day whenever we visit.

I remember the first time I spent Christmas outside of my family home. It was my boyfriends house, I was in my early 20s. It was awful - nothing like my family's celebration - I spent the entire day thinking 'they are doing Christmas wrong 🤬'

Same vibes from the OP's post 😂

Fair, but they're not talking about real US culture, rather the slop monoculture that the US exports to the rest of the world, which often overrides indigenous traditions. It's our fault for taking it.

I think a lot of things are evolving as globalisation gathers pace. All Hallow’s Eve is now Halloween, lots of schools have proms and yearbooks, kids are more likely to be cheerleading than Morris dancing. It’s not compulsory though and I don’t see it as a bad thing to have more choices.

And if you say “mirror” instead of “looking glass” or “movie” instead of “film” or “Frappuccino” instead of “iced coffee” then there’s an older generation rolling their eyes at you, too.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the US becomes weaker and China takes over as the global hegemon. I wonder if we'll start importing their culture, or if it will be to inaccessible/culturally different to market to the west.

What ?

I can't see Chinese culture having anything like the impact of US culture on the world. There's almost zero familiarity with it as things stand.

A rap on the knuckles from your Nana?

What a charming Christmas tradition! I can see why you long for the good old days. 😏

I can’t get worked up about “Santa”, but I dislike the Americanism “holiday” to describe Christmas and other celebrations, that seems to be creeping in. When we Brits say “holiday”, we mean time off work or school, or going away, which the Americans call “vacation”. But I keep hearing Christmas holiday, Halloween holiday, Easter holiday etc. We’ll hear Thanksgiving holiday (this side of the Atlantic) next.