Saturday 19 December 2015

UK Chrimbo v US Christmas

Watching a bellyful of Christmas films you do tend to notice that some British Christmas traditions that never made it over to America or things that we just do different.
It seems that when children leave a little something for Father Christmas to help keep up his energy levels as he whizzes around the globe delivering presents, in America it is milk and cookies where in Britain we go for wine and a mince pie because you know, Santa is an adult not 8.
Americans don't have Christmas pudding and i have never seen a pig in blanket and hardly a mince pie, Christmas Cake or even a trifle is mentioned but they do have egg nog but I'm not really sure what that is but i guess it has an egg in it somewhere. 
Americans say Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas while we interchange between Happy Christmas and Merry Christmas and in all the American Christmas films i have ever seen, not once have i heard it referred to as Chrimbo as it is here. Come to that, the jolly fat man only seems to be called 'Father Christmas' over here as Americans refer to him as 'Santa Claus' or simply 'Santa'.
You won't see a cracker pulled around the Christmas Table in any American movies either and because of events which ended with boxes of tea floating off down the Boston harbour, they wont be sat around watching the Queens Message either where the pensioner tells us about her year with clips of her waving at people in different countries. 
While the day after Christmas is mainly for arguing over why the day after Christmas is called Boxing Day, Americans avoid this altogether by not having a Boxing Day at all.
Finally, at a time of year when Brits are used to seeing washed-up celebrities ply their seasonal trade in the latest pantomime, the US has never followed this tradition of celebrating high camp and cross dressing for children's entertainment and the hilarity of shouting 'Behind You' and 'Oh no it's not, oh yes it is' to a man dressed in a wig and dress.

2 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Falling on a bruise said...

The day after Chrimbo we grab the receipts and exchange presents at the shops instead. I did clean the oven though.