The Great British Christmas

So as most of you know I am British. I love Christmas and obviously I love my country’s traditions (some are a bit quirky-I guess that’s why I love them!) I‘m interested in finding out more about our rich Christmas traditions. I found this book and I ordered it because I thought it would be perfect for research to add to my own Christmas celebrations and explain them to you.

You may already know some of our British traditions, like crackers, but do you know where they come from? This book explains some really interesting traditions, so let me take you through some of them!

So let’s start with one you probably know about:

Christmas cracker

Tom Smith was a confectioner, a sweetmaker and on a holiday to France he saw bonbons wrapped individually. Tom decided to add an extra outer layer with little love mottos on them. Tom was sat by the fire one day thinking about how he could make his sweets even more unique, a log rolled off and when Tom kicked it back onto the fire it made a crackling noise and that’s how the snap or crack came to be in our Christmas crackers. They had to be made bigger to fit the snap in. It was actually his son who added the paper hat to his father‘s creation, which now had a toy and a motto. He had a lot of competition but he eventually got a Royal warrant (which is given by the monach-this is a very big honour in the UK!). He provided all the crackers for the palace.

Boxing Day, 26th December

(British public holiday)

Traditionally tradespeople, postmen, refuse collectors and deliverymen would visit homes and businesses to collect their Christmas tips which were put in a small clay box. It is still common to leave your delivery drivers little chocolates to help themselves to and little cards to say thank you! In my family we also do a lucky dip box on Boxing Day which for years, I thought that’s why it was called that!

Photo (below) of page 41 from

The Great British Christmas

In recent years, the BIG SALES start and they’re similar to the Black Friday deals in America. I have to say that in my family, Boxing Day was still part of the Christmas celebrations with more of a buffet style lunch. We never went to the sales, but we have looked online for the Boxing Day sale deals. Football is also played in the UK on Boxing Day (I’ve only ever been to one match when my Late Father was in hospital-it was a one off and not really a normal Christmas that year!) Actually my Late Father did go to the football years ago and he went with my mother, suddenly he produced a mini Christmas dinner from his coat pocket-literally him down to a T! I’m sure if we lived closer to our team, my hubby would be wanting to go and take our daughter to the game too!

The Christmas Card

Henry Cole and John Horsely invented the Christmas Card in 1843. Henry was also the first director of the V & A (Queen Victoria and Prince Albert museum.) Prince Albert brought a lot of his German Christmas traditions over to Britain (like the Christmas tree) and this actually helped make Henry’s Christmas cards become more popular later on. The V and A hold the National collection of 30,000 Christmas cards which shows the origins of these Victorian traditions.

By the Victorian era the Christmas Card had gone through a few changes, becoming cheaper due to being imported from Germany and they were then sold in Penny baskets (which had a dozen cards in- I think this was the earliest pack of cards!) The cards were sold by tobacconists, Drapers and your shops.

By the Victorian era it had become very popular for the middle and upper classes to display their cards which now had a variety of winter scenes, including Robins, evergreens, churches, snowy landscapes and also interior scenes like gift gifting, decorating the Christmas tree, Christmas dinners, Father Christmas (Santa Claus) children playing games and pantomimes (another tradition- more on that later!)

The First Christmas card was auctioned off in 2013 and was sold for £22,000.

My card writing and sending has been very sporadic over the years however after my kidney transplant I managed to design and send some photo-edited cards of my family in a snowy scene being pelted by snow balls (actually a traditional winter games).

Here you can see I edited the photo to look like we are in the middle of a snowball fight! I’m also posting my Christmas Cards in our very British post box!

Last year I send our family photo of us at Santa’s Grotto to my family and friends. I know that many people now set up Christmas photoshoots to then send as their Christmas cards.

My first family Christmas Card with Phoebe meeting Father Christmas. (Not sure it would get in the V and A museum but it will definitely be part of our collection!)

A Christmas Pantomime

Pantomimes are normally a traditional story, such as Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Aladdin/ Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, Peter Pan, Dick Whittington, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Beauty and the Beast are a few of the pantomimes that are most popular. They normally have some jokes that only adults get, the usual “it’s behind you” and “oh no you didn’t.....” will often be staples of the panto. Nowadays lots of celebrities will often play a main part in the story. In Britain Pantomimes were originally small bite size performances between Opera performances. Pantomimes will often have males playing female roles and females playing male roles. In Shakespeare's day males had to play female roles as women were not allowed to be on a stage and act.

Last year in Weymouth it was Cinderella which I would love to have seen. They had a trail around our town of scenes from the pantomime.

The shoe was part of the Cindrella trail. The Pantomime Dame also did our Christmas Tree lighting and the Dame also took part in our local Santa Dash in which hundreds of Santas run across the beach after a giant Christmas Pudding-quite a sight!

My parents took my brother and I to see Jack and the Beanstalk as a surprise one Christmas which was lovely! I would love to take my daughter to one.

A Royal Christmas Tree-Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert put their Christmas tree with all of their presents under it with their children, this was captured by an engraving which was shown in the Ilustrated London News in 1848 and from then on the Christmas tree was universally adopted by the nation. Many of our old traditions have been revived.

The 8 foot Royal Christmas tree was decorated with gingerbread, eggs filled with sweatmeats (potentially our mince pies?) and baskets and trays filled with more sweetmeats.

photo of page 94

from The Great British Christmas

Mince Pies

Mince Pies originally had mincemeat in them. They originally had mince meat/suet, fruits, spices. The spices were cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, these spices represented the gifts brought to Jesus.

These mince pies below are my mum’s and brother’s mince pies they make (many batches of them.) I used to help make them when I was younger.

Stir Up Sundays

Stir-up Sunday is a term in Anglican Churches for the last Sunday before Advent. Its name comes from the beginning of the collect for the day in the Book of Common Pray, which begins with the words,

"Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people".

But it has become associated with the custom of making the Christmas pudding on that day.

Our Christmas Pudding orginates from the medieval period, it is also known as plum pudding (although it never had plums in but it’s raisins that the Victorians were actually referring to.) The Christmas pudding has Suet (if you don’t fancy that, now you can get vegetable shortening) eggs, many dried fruits, sometimes soaked in treacle or molasses.The pudding has cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg and some other spices. The pudding is usually aged for a month or even a year. It normal has alcohol in it (to preserve it) its normally Brandy (which is why it sets fire so well-no really we do set it alight!) We normally put it in muslin and boil it in a special bowl that gives it that unique shape.

Not many of my hubby’s family like Christmas pudding so I always get a little one so I can have it!

Photo of page 117 of Christmas Recipes

by Igloobooks

Bizarrely I can’t find any Christmas pudding pics I’ve taken not on my phone anyway which has about 9,000 photos -really need to do something about that! I love it, I normally have brandy cream with it which is delicious! I’ve never attempted to make one but I might try this year! I’ve said it a few times but whenever it comes round to giving one of my uncles his Christmas Pudding we all yell no custard for....... I‘m sure he loves us doing that (he hates custard- I think he didn’t like the school custard!)

Right, well I think I will leave it there, I’ve barely touched on many of our traditions so I will definitely do a follow-up. This book is fascinating and I will continue reading it. I’ve also got the Christmas Companion and Mrs Beeton’s Christmas cookbook, which funnily enough was referenced in this book so I’m looking forward to going through that and learning new recipes. I think she’s like the Mrs Patmore, if you like, of her day!

Right, (typically British and has to have said several times before actually being about to polite excuse themselves and leave!) I really am off, I’ve waffled enough.

I hope you enjoy my post and will definitely have to do a part two!

Bye my festive friendsXX