to be utterly bemused by British obsession with seasonal sleighbells, snow and sleds when we all know it is nowt but grey damp and dank at Christmas on this isle?

[moondog]

Why bemused? You can't really whip up the same excitement with pictures of Father Christmas looking slightly damp having dragged his sack around under an umbrella. It's about celebrating an ideal not learning to live with what we've got.

speak for yourself we get quite a lot of snow and i like sleigbells and sledges and dont care if its grey anyway if you dont like it fair enough but dont waste it for everybody else

YABVU

We had snow on Boxing day a few years ago, it COULD happen on Christmas day, and until this fair isle has not seen a single flake for a thousand years I will happily assume Christmas is all about snowmen and sleighs.

You lot of Pollyannas!

You have a point. I would love it to snow on Christmas day but it will probably rain. Charles Dickens has a lot to answer for IMO.

pictures of drizzle would make really crap Christmas cards tho. YABU

It's not just the British.

Spent christmas in Thailand many yeras ago. I've never seen so much fake snow and cotton wool-type scenes decorating the hotel.

This was in a French run hotel so not aimed at the Brits.

We also had snow, for a few hours at least, on christmas day about 5 years ago

Now I love a snowy-themed midwinter festival, but it's one of the many things that makes me giggle when the more bucketheaded Christians start whining about the appropriating of their event while glueing cotton wool to a toy stable. 'IN The Bleak Midwinter' is a complete invention, the average temperature in Israel in december is something like 60F.

Christmas is all about pretty stories as any fule kno.

Seriously, it is all down to Dickens. There were reports about it a few years ago, on how an unusual number of white Christmases during his childhood led him to make it part of his work, and thus part of our culture. Read about it here

Personally I love all the imagery. It's not the same when snow arrives as it actually does in February.

You do know Father Christmas doesn't exist either?!!

Escapism.

christmas weather is blardy awful. Prospect of pretty snow, sleighbells and stuff makes the miserable winter a bit better.

I am getting utterly sick of the snow adverts too, FFS it NEVER blardy snows at Xmas here in Essex.

Littlewoods ad is on - all farking snow and Xmas trees. Grrr!

"we all know it is nowt but grey damp and dank at Christmas on this isle?"

I tuned into R4 in the car the other day and someone was explaining that we have more grey skies in the UK than just about anywhere else. It's not just at Christmas either ...

eighties is right. It was colder in ye olden days - they used to have frost fairs on the ice-bound Thames, for heaven's sake! (Admittedly this was two centuries before Dickens.)

SGB, I thought Jesus was actually born sometime around April* - would that be a tad chilly in Israel?

*Actually notwithstanding doubt about the actual existence of Jesus as a historical figure let alone the Godhead.

speak for yourselves.... often snow up in scotland in december... last i checked that was still britain.

yes, I have experienced quite a few snowy or at least very frosty Christmases.

Keep Bleak House to yourself

oh pffff... I have a 2yo DS and an 18mo DNephew. Christmas is going to be awesome this year. Snow or S no w

oops.

i KNEW this was oyur thread without even looking

you ol moaner

I once did Christmas in Russia.
Fab, poncing about in fur hat and taking the tram everywhere (stench of garlic,vodka, bo and fags therein not so fab).

I announced grnadly to colleagues I was planning to take a ride in a troika

troika

and she fell about laughing and said that noone ever goes in troikas anymore.

Was gutted.

snows up here fairly regularly, and is more likely to be crisply frosty and shiny than dank and wet.

[sings] Deep and crisp and even

Now stop all this Christmassy snowy talk or I will have to put on the Carol Symphony which is not allowed until 21 December.

[baubles emoticon]

This is why I am never moving out of Minnesota. Issues we may have, but by God we have at least a foot of snow every December

I live in Singapore and just last week saw kids playing outside in Santa's Grotto complete with fake snow machine and loud speaker system blaring out 'Walking in a Winter Wonderland' - it was 8pm and 30 degrees!