Which of these British Christmas traditions would you adopt?

Only nr 21. the others are too much effort.

Oh wait, we do that already.

3 – I love mince pies.
4 – Because I am Santa. Duh.
In fact, all of the booze or booze-soaked pastry related ones
And of course 21. Because yes.

Loads of these were traditions when my family celebrated Christmas together. Whoever I’m with for Christmas, we still usually do #5, #6 (ummm… you can’t do #5 without doing #6 and vice versa), #19 and #20.

I have loads of British friends, and I’ve tried most of those. I would love to do them all.

7 8 11 21

I would like the paper hats and chocolate oranges best.

All of them. I’m an incurable Anglophile.

I loathe mince pies with a passion, almost as much as xmas pud.
Boxing Day is the dogs bollocks, my fave day of the whole holiday.

I like the famous people showing up to turn on the lights.

We often have chocolates and other candies during Christmas here in America, so that’s not much different.

When I was little my family used to buy chocolate oranges. I don’t think they are popular sellers in America though, not compared to other chocolates.

Having Boxing Day off from work sounds good to me. Retail being closed sounds good too. In America December is one if the busiest days, sometimes the busiest. The dollar sales aren’t the highest all year, because a lot of returns are done. Retails handle many more transactions than a typical busy Christmas shopping. Many people overlook how much work retail staff does on the 26th after already being exhausted. The 25th is just one day of rest, one day to collapse, God forbid you also had to cook a big Christmas dinner, and then dragging yourself in again on the 26th. It’s extended torture.

If I were King of the World, you’d get the 24th – 28th off. Christmas Eve to prepare for the next day, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, My Birthday, and Hangover Day to recover. And hell, at that point just take it through to the 2nd of January, which you should also get off because that’s my daddy’s birthday.

Let’s all just never work again. Frak it.

3, 5, 8 (but we do that in America already), 14, 19 (because I like taking walks), and 21 – even though that’s also done a lot of places in America already.

Oh wow, I had forgotten some of these.
What fun!
We used to giggle about the liberally soaked varieties of food delights, the flame to present it, and all the people snockered to boot. An accident in the making. There should be a designated sober food-server in the group to oversee the flames!
In the US- that flaming mixture comes together when people try to deep fry a turkey in their garage while drinking beer. Yikes! Enough said.

This list reminded me of a song The Chieftains did with Elvis Costello called The St. Stephen’s Day Murders which mentions several of the items listed and a few not.

I love THAT song and the lyrics to that tune confirm the verdict of Costello as a straight up genius. The grandsons by now regard the song as THE Christmas carol having grown up on the Chieftains version; and the moment it comes on we roar out the lyrics together:

“And the carcass of the beast, left over from the feast, may still be found haunting the kitchen.
And there’s life in it yet, we may live to regret when the ones that we poisoned stop twitcin”