Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Christmas

From present ideas to party food, find all your Christmas inspiration here.

American Christmas

168 replies

RedHelenB · 17/12/2023 06:11

Just curious to know whether the naff Christmas movies are at all like the experience over there. Do you bake Christmas cookies and deliver to neighbours? Do you have candy cane lanes?

OP posts:
Honeychickpea · 18/12/2023 03:44

SerenityNowInsanityLater · 17/12/2023 16:09

GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER

That’s so heartwarming and beautiful… that big ol’ tattered stocking was made with love and it carries the gift of family tradition/history.

I wonder if, as a Californian and first generation American, the stocking tradition just totally bypassed our home. I find different parts of the States, particularly New England (which really holds the origins of US history) much more traditional than out West. Though we have tamales! 😋

My childhood was split between the US and Ireland. In neither did I or anyone I know receive a stocking. The only place I know that does stockings is Mumsnet 😂

mondaytosunday · 18/12/2023 03:49

I grew up in New England and I'm there now! Christmas dinner is the same as UK, minus the bread sauce and pigs in blankets. But your roasties, sprouts, stuffing and cranberry sauce etc. are all there. Plus sweet potato. Never had cauliflower cheese or red cabbage in the US - but I've never had that at any English Christmas I've been to either but the stores seem to push them.
And no it's not like the Kranks, you do know that those Christmas movies are an idealised version of everything?
Mind you my sister has just announced she has to bake four dozen cookies as presents this week...

mathanxiety · 18/12/2023 03:53

SerenityNowInsanityLater · 17/12/2023 10:53

Sandgrown that’s true. We don’t acknowledge Boxing/St. Stephen’s Day which is why I think Thanksgiving is the bigger holiday. We get a 4 day weekend for TG. Christmas is just the day itself (at least, it was the case when I was growing up).
I find it rather annoying that (American) Thanksgiving is so big. I never celebrate it. It sits uncomfortably with me, given our history of exploitation and wholesale slaughter of the indigenous Americans. I digress.

But EVERY year, a family member back home will ask, “Are you cooking the turkey yet?”
My 25 plus years of “No. It's fish finger night… just a normal day here in Merry Ol’ Blighty and we don’t have frozen dinosaur-sized turkeys to buy at any rate,” hasn’t sunk in.

LOL, my mother in Ireland is completely bamboozled every year when I tell her we're having a full turkey dinner on a Thursday in late November. To her turkey = Christmas.

mathanxiety · 18/12/2023 03:55

@Honeychickpea

No stockings in Ireland for me either. I thought of them as something that only happened between the pages of Enid Blyton books and was surprised to find they really exist.

mantyzer · 18/12/2023 03:56

Hanging candy canes on Christmas trees is common.

DC1888 · 18/12/2023 03:56

DC1888 · 18/12/2023 03:29

It's not as big a deal there because the legacy of the Puritans (who banned Christmas, and almost everything else worth enjoying) is much stronger in the US than the UK. While the UK (England as it was) declared the draconian Puritan laws null and void in 1660 (ending the ban on Christmas (see the BBC link below), football on Sundays, holding hands while dancing, theatre, drinking/toasting etc. etc.), Puritans across the Atlantic had a much greater grip on power. Christmas didn't become a federal holiday in the US until the 1870s.

In 1917 the US writer H. L. Mencken wrote that the US had not cast aside the pernicious Puritans influence: "The Puritan's utter lack of aesthetic sense, his distrust of all romantic emotion, his unmatchable intolerance of opposition, his unbreakable belief in his own bleak and narrow views, his savage cruelty of attack, his lust for relentless and barbarous persecution – these things have put an almost unbearable burden up on the exchange of ideas in the United States."

Three years later the US had prohibition (no alcohol). Even today you have to be over 21 to drink there. Having extreme religious views also transfers into other aspects of society, such as attitude to race. The Ku Klux Klan (white, Christian nationalists) an example. The emergence of the second era Klan was triggered by a film (that's all it took)...Birth of a Nation (1915)...the black character (white actor in blackface) in the film was the villain of course (portrayed as a rapist)...with an audience member firing shots at the sceen to "save the white woman" running away from him. After the film four million people became Klan members, partaking in religious symbolism (cross burnings) as well as lynchings etc.

The Virginia trial court Judge Leon Bazile, who in 1958 charged Richard and Mildred Loving (interracial couple) with a felony (interracial marraige was illegal there until 1967) he defended his decision by invoking God: "When Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay, and red, and placed them on separate continents, and but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend the races to mix."

The Puritan legacy of guilt associated with sexual relations outside marriage...a teary Tiger Woods being wheeled out to do a press conference in 2009 because he had cheated on his wife (utterly surreal, wtf has his private life got to do with the golf or the public?).

Puritans were an extremist, persecuting cult, and that cult-like influence has been a major part of the 13 colonies/US landscape for centuries, as opposed to England where their reign of terror only lasted a few decades and ended in 1660. Christian fundamentalism, the bible belt, the megachurchs, the televangelists, the reciting a pledge every morning at school, the politicians having to publicly declare their faith (its everyone's business there, and you must have a faith otherwise they have no chance of being elected), nutters like Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert getting elected, Alex Jones, the latest school massacre followed by that very effective response of "thoughts and prayers" ...the legacy of an extremist sect, from the 1600s, goes on and on there.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20141219-when-christmas-carols-were-banned

Oh forgot to add (can't edit that post now so have to quote it)

David Bowie. When asked if him coming out as bisexual in the 1970s was a mistake, he said it wasn't in Europe, but it was in "Puritanical America".

Every facet of life there has been affected by a bigoted, persecuting cult.

Christmas (among other things these creeps banned) has an extra special meaning of freedom.

flowerchild2000 · 18/12/2023 04:07

We do lots of cookie decorating, gingerbread houses, puppy chow, fudge, divinity, caramel popcorn, just so many sweets. Every town has a neighborhood that transforms into a candy cane lane as you call it. Driving through at night to marvel is a big tradition. Our local mall has entire wing devoted to local crafters selling their stuff for gifts, and a "north pole" with a big throne and animatronic reindeer for Santa. There's always a big ceremony for lighting the courthouse and tree downtown. People dress up in ugly sweaters and yes definitely hang stockings! I grew up in Texas and everyone had stockings their grandmother embroidered with their names for the adults, children and pets. Our hamster had a stocking even. The food will vary depending on the region. Tamales are big in Texas too, and it depends on the family but we might have lasagna, ham, venison or turkey. Deviled eggs, baked cheese grits and homemade butter rolls were my favorite. When I was a kid we used to go caroling, I wonder if anyone does that anymore? Probably not for safety.

flowerchild2000 · 18/12/2023 04:18

I think there's some weird traditions that aren't in movies too, like our family had one side that were German immigrants and there is a tradition of hiding a pickle ornament on the tree. I always thought this was normal but found out later it's very specific to American descendants of Germans. In our family whichever kid found the ornament got a Yankee Dime. And you didn't know if the Yankee Dime would turn out to be a kiss or a spanking!

ithinkthatmaybeimdreaming · 18/12/2023 04:19

Maddy70 · 17/12/2023 08:53

Brits usually have a standard Christmas dinner of a turkey roast. Starter and Christmas pudding. Of course there will be changes due to personal tastes but that's what we have. It's not unreasonable to assume Americans have something similar ?

The US is a lot bigger than the UK, with different climates in different parts of the country, plus they have a huge celebration at Thanksgiving, which is only a month beforehand. Of course it's unreasonable to assume Americans have a standard Christmas dinner.

I live in NZ, which is much smaller (population wise) than the UK and people here have different types of Christmas dinner.

elp30 · 18/12/2023 04:21

I am American and grew up on the US/Mexican border. My father and all four of my grandparents were Mexican nationals so my Christmases were very different from Americans in the northern states.

Thanksgiving is the holiday that sort of unites us all in the US. My family, my German neighbors, and my Korean friends all had "traditional" Thanksgiving fare with some cultural additions. My husband is English so my Thanksgiving meal is more like an English roast dinner. Christmas, in my experience, is completely different.

My family would get together in mid-December and have a "tamelada". Tamales are a food stuff that consists of nixtamalized corn masa spread on corn husks, filled with shredded pork/beef in a very spicy red chile sauce, folded and steamed. There's also green chile and chicken, bean and cheese and variations of sweet tamales. It's basically a party because we make at least three or four dozen a family. It wasn't unusual to make 50 dozen. I remember eating those on Christmas morning with either hot chocolate or "champurrado" which is a corn masa drink with chocolate and cinnamon after Christmas Mass.

We didn't have much of a Christmas meal when I was a child because my parents and grandparents, in Mexican tradition, had their celebrations on January 6th, "Dia de Los Reyes Magos" or the "The Day of the Kings". That was the day we had a few gifts.

All four of my grandparents and my mother died by the time I turned 10 and my older sister, she was 18, decided she wanted a more American Christmas. Christmas lunch was sometimes a baked ham with mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, and carrots but since we were Mexican, there would be salsas, corn tortillas and some Mexican side dish like "nopales"/ cactus paddles in a tomato, jalapeño, onion sauce. Other times, we would eat "posole" which is pork in a very spicy red Chile broth with hominy topped with avocados, red cabbage, onions, radishes and chiles. That's traditional for January 6th. We also opened presents on Christmas Day.

Christmas in my home now, are a combination of Mexican, American, British traditions. When it comes to food, it's different every year. This year, I am making green chile and cheese tamales on Christmas Eve and will go to Spanish Midnight Mass at my Catholic Church and eat the tamales for breakfast in the morning. For lunch, we will probably have a mushroom, spinach and brown rice loaf with mashed and roasted potatoes (my husband has to have the roast potatoes) and gravy, Yorkshire pudding, honey-roasted parsnips, carrots and pull crackers and wear the hats during the meal. My husband watches the Queen's/King's Speech on SkyNews. We also have Mimosas/Buck's Fizz on Boxing Day and depending on the weather in Texas (it's sometimes 75F), we will have a cook-out or a curry. We will probably have posole on January 6th and eat some "Rosca de Reyes" cake and hope to have the piece with the baby Jesus.

Happyhappyday · 18/12/2023 04:42

I literally baked cookies with my neighbors yesterday and frosted with all the kids. There is a street named Candy Cane Lane in my city and yes it decorates a ton. Most of the houses in the city have a few lights and a handful go all out.

Live on the west coast, I was recently in Utah and they went ALL OUT.

DC1888 · 18/12/2023 04:43

One more more thing (the list of acts they invoke God for is endless)

Manifest destiny (phrase coined in 1845)... the "design of Providence". The concept that whites were destined by God (the Christian one obvs) to expand the US from coast to coast, meaning the ethnic cleansing of the Natives from their land in the process. With 'God on your side' you can do no wrong. "God bless merica"

And according to Harry Truman and the other evangelical Christians there, interracial marriage violated biblical teaching (per the link).

So to reiterate the answer to the question, and the answer is a broad one, Christmas, being banned by the Puritans, an extremist, persecuting cult, has a much lower profile in the US than the UK as the stranglehold of the Puritans' influence has lasted centuries in the US, with this religious fervour affecting every aspect of society.

https://christianscholars.com/almighty-god-created-the-races-christianity-marriage-american-law/

Almighty God Created the Races: Christianity, Marriage & American Law. - Christian Scholar’s Review

Almighty God Created the Races: Christianity, Marriage & American Law Fay Botham Published by University of North Carolina Press in 2012 pp / $ / Amazon Goodreads Just a few...

https://christianscholars.com/almighty-god-created-the-races-christianity-marriage-american-law

MikeRafone · 18/12/2023 04:48

Christmas tree bags

what are these?

thebestinterest · 18/12/2023 04:49

RedHelenB · 17/12/2023 06:11

Just curious to know whether the naff Christmas movies are at all like the experience over there. Do you bake Christmas cookies and deliver to neighbours? Do you have candy cane lanes?

LOL
We don’t bake cookies (too lazy currently, but we do have a young baby so I’m sure we will start at some point), but my in laws do! My neighbor also bakes and brings us treats, all traditional.

Xmas day we go over to in-laws and uncomfortably unwrap Xmas gifts (which I hate doing) and have Xmas dinner. I think thanksgiving is a bit of a bigger deal, though… family actually flies in for that.

bert3400 · 18/12/2023 04:59

When I lived there I was shocked that everyone went back to work on the 26th Dec....it was just a normal day.

knitnerd90 · 18/12/2023 05:01

There isn't a "standard" American Christmas dinner like there is in the UK or there is for American Thanksgiving. Christmas is a holiday that's shaped by whatever cultural or religious traditions you brought to America. Catholics do it differently from Protestants too.

So Puerto Ricans make pasteles (similar to Mexican tamales, but the masa is different), Italians have fish on Christmas Eve and then a meat lunch on Christmas Day. If you're "just white" with no particular ethnic traditions, it could be a ham or a rib of beef, though the stores always have turkey available. I know people who will swear that Thanksgiving is turkey, Christmas is beef and Easter is ham, and others who say that Christmas is ham and easter is lamb.

If you are Jewish like me and live in a big city, you get Chinese food, which stems from the days when Chinese restaurants were the only thing open! (American Jews don't generally celebrate Christmas unless they have non-Jewish family members.)

Hallmark movies are so cliched that Americans mock them, they are always set in small towns and have perfect winter weather and everyone wears terrible sweaters. Christmas cookies are popular and people do swaps, I have had neighbours bring us some.

merrymelodies · 18/12/2023 05:10

I think turkey, stuffing, gravy, Brussels sprouts and carrots are standard Christmas fare in the US. Cranberry sauce too. Mashed potatoes rather than roast potatoes but I could be wrong.

I know the Americans have turkey for Thanksgiving, with yams and marshmallows (yuck). I personally would not want to prepare, cook and eat roast turkey twice in five weeks!

SpuytenDuyvil · 18/12/2023 05:35

@merrymelodies Exactly. That is why what you describe is Thanksgiving. Christmas is not normally turkey.

merrymelodies · 18/12/2023 05:42

SpuytenDuyvil · 18/12/2023 05:35

@merrymelodies Exactly. That is why what you describe is Thanksgiving. Christmas is not normally turkey.

I'm no expert but the Americans I know and to whose homes I've been invited have all served turkey at Christmas. Obviously there are no hard and fast rules. It's interesting to read about similarities and differences between American traditions and English ones.

Justleaveitblankthen · 18/12/2023 05:47

MissBuffyAnneSummers · 17/12/2023 09:25

Shame about the snotty replies.

The non-arsehole replies have been very interesting

Sometimes the first Poster is wetting themselves that they can start a big pile-on of replies all basically sagging of the OP.
You have to wade through all that bollocks first 🙄
Interesting thread otherwise.

ithinkthatmaybeimdreaming · 18/12/2023 05:49

bert3400 · 18/12/2023 04:59

When I lived there I was shocked that everyone went back to work on the 26th Dec....it was just a normal day.

What a strange thing to say. I could say I'm shocked that people in England and Wales go back to work on January 2nd, as it's a public holiday here, but I realise that not every country is the same.

knitnerd90 · 18/12/2023 05:56

As I say, some people do serve turkey, it's certainly sold, but in my experience it's the minority choice as turkey isn't so nice that people want to eat it twice in 5 weeks.

RedHelenB · 18/12/2023 06:14

ithinkthatmaybeimdreaming · 18/12/2023 05:49

What a strange thing to say. I could say I'm shocked that people in England and Wales go back to work on January 2nd, as it's a public holiday here, but I realise that not every country is the same.

But Anerica is more Christian so you'd assume they'd have that off I suppose

OP posts:
Vebrithien · 18/12/2023 07:00

It has been absolutely fascinating, reading about all the different, delicious sounding foods and traditions that people on America have.

Thank you for starting the thread @RedHelenB , despite the 'roasting' you initially got!

I wonder if I might ask a couple of questions?

Decorating for Thanksgiving - are there any particular decorations associated with the holiday?

Baking cookies - is there a 'standard' recipe, or do you just make whichever flavour cookie you prefer?

Christmas pudding/cake - a previous poster said that they missed these, and couldn't get them. Can you get all the ingredients (raisins, currants, sultanas, glacé cherries, mixed spice, and brandy)? Or, are these dark, dried fruits more difficult to get hold of? (Happy to share my traditional recipes for these, if anyone wants them).

Our traditions (plain old English, with Italian and Austrian roots to my parents in law) are fish on Christmas Eve, turkey and beef on Christmas Day, and ham on Boxing Day. I'll make the Christmas cake and pudding, we'll go to carol services and Midnight Mass.

The children get one present from Father Christmas, in a stocking, and one present from Befana (Italian present-giving witch) on the 6th of January. The rest of the presents are from us.

We also celebrate the saints days, in the run up to Christmas. St Clement (23rd November) with orange and lemon cake, St Nicolas (6th December) with chocolate fish for the children (Austrian tradition) and St Lucia (13th December) with saffron buns.

There is a loooooot of food involved in the season of Christmas, for us!

SenecaFallsRedux · 18/12/2023 08:17

Dried and candied fruits are widely available in the South where I live, where fruit cake is still a tradition in some families. But it is definitely not as popular as in years past.