Their mores. British habits: why celebrate Christmas so early

The Christmas tree outside our local library was put up six weeks before Christmas. They hadn’t started decorating it yet, so maybe I’m being nit-picky, but it still seemed a little early. A couple of days later, I noticed that one of my neighbors had also put up a tree, its lights twinkling in the pre-dawn twilight when I walk the dog.

Usually Christmas trees are not put up until the first Sunday of Advent, which this year is November 30. Victorians put up and decorated Christmas trees even closer to the holiday, so if you’d rather wait, you’re in good company. It may surprise you to know that this “ancient tradition” is not actually British or even that old. The custom of decorating Christmas trees originated in Britain in the 1840s thanks to Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, who brought it over from Germany.

I usually put up the tree a couple of weeks before Christmas. For a long time I lived abroad – in Egypt and Russia, countries where the local Christians celebrate Christmas according to a different calendar. So I didn’t always celebrate “our” Christmas (December 25) with a tree and a traditional Christmas dinner with turkey and all. But now, on my return to the UK, the family Christmas dinner is always held at my sister’s house.

As a child, she and I always went to visit my grandparents on my mom’s side, where the whole family would gather. Dad preferred to stay home with the cats, which he decorated with bow ties – it was Christmas after all (a bit of English eccentricity). I loved that they put a separate table for us kids. And it seemed incredibly “grown-up” when they poured us sparkling apple juice, something we’d never even seen at home. The ultimate punishment for us was, of course, Brussels sprouts. I love it now, but as a child I hated it, and my grandmother would not let us leave the table until we had finished everything (“children are starving in Africa, and you don’t want to finish your dinner!”). My sister and I begged my mother to spare us and put less cabbage on the table (we couldn’t refuse at all).

For me, a real Christmas dinner is turkey, baked potatoes and parsnips, Brussels sprouts, carrots, Yorkshire pudding, stuffing and gravy, and for dessert, Christmas pudding with brandy butter and, since it’s a holiday, trifle. I always buy Christmas pudding – my mother used to make it, but my grandmother made it herself. Trifle, on the other hand, I never buy. It’s pretty easy to make, and it’s especially delicious if you make custard yourself, rather than buying ready-made or using powdered custard. The main thing is to remember that the whole preparation takes a couple of days, because first you need to let the jelly harden.

Here’s my classic recipe for trayfle

Ingredients

• Two cartons of Hartley’s strawberry jelly.
• Pack cookies for trayfle or savoiardi
• Frozen raspberries (you can do without berries)
• 570 ml heavy cream (heavy cream)
• 6 large egg yolks
• 50 g golden cane sugar
• 1 dessert spoon of cornstarch
• 1 dessert spoon of vanilla extract
• Whipped cream
• Sprinkles

Method of preparation

Today, Christmas puddings, mince pies and other seasonal products appear in stores as early as early November. And Christmas commercials start in the middle of that month. It’s funny that it almost always snows in them, although Britain hasn’t seen real snow at Christmas since about Tudor times. I’m not a big fan of sentimental commercials, and I’m definitely not one to look forward to a new holiday campaign, but this year’s John Lewis commercial features Alison Limerick’s 1990 club hit “Where Love Lives,” which is also on my gym playlist, so if you close your eyes, the commercial is quite watchable (although I have to accept that, like the dad in the commercial, my clubbing days are behind me).

Of course, the main audience of the Christmas advertising campaign is children, who start choosing presents in advance. When I was little, we used to get certain things every year. We were handed an Advent calendar until December 1. In those days, they were just paper calendars with windows that hid pictures, not chocolates or toys like today, but it was still terribly interesting – it was a way to count the days until the main holiday. For each of the sisters, the parents hung a Christmas stocking over the fireplace with chocolates, tangerines, and small toys. Our parents also gave us books or, when we got older, book tokens – gift certificates so that we could choose our own books. And finally, we’d get one big gift – an expensive toy we’d been dreaming about all year. Plus Christmas was one of the two days of the year (the other being Easter) when we were allowed to eat as many sweets as we wanted!

Photo: Erica Marsland Huynh on Unsplash

Now, I no longer buy Advent calendars or collect Christmas stockings, but since returning to the UK I have started sending Christmas cards again – not electronic ones, but paper ones. Like Christmas trees, postcards are a Victorian invention; they were originally meant to encourage the use of the newly established postal service. Last year we moved to a new place in mid-December, and postcards were the easiest way to get to know our closest new neighbors. This year, I’m sending cards that artist Tracey Emin created for Blue Cross, an animal charity.

And while this article began with a slight grumble about the Christmas holidays starting earlier and earlier, I’m not a Grinch at all and actually quite like Christmas – I just don’t need it to last six weeks.

Cover photo: London West End, 1970. Evening Standard/Getty Images