American Christmas vs British Christmas: My Top 10 Differences

It's the same holiday and the same festive season, but there are differences in the experience according to which country you are in.

Myself, drinking a pint of Christmas cheer in a pub in Skipton, Yorkshire, during the festive season.

Below is a list of the main things that I've noticed:

1. For sure, Thanksgiving steals the thunder of Christmas in the U.S. to some extent.  Relatives often make a long journey to meet up for Thanksgiving and don't repeat it for Christmas.  In Britain, there are no nearby festivals to rival Christmas (November 5th is a very different sort of event) and so it is usually the only big meet up point for families during the Autumn and Winter months, perhaps even the entire year.
2. Maybe surprisingly, given that America is a much more religious place, most of the public holidays tend to be secular, presumably due to the separation of church and state.  In the U.K. the longest and most important holidays of the year are Christmas and Easter, when the country closes down for at least two or three days.
3. In the U.S. workers maybe get to leave work early on Christmas eve, then they have Christmas Day, but it is straight back to work on December 26th.  In Britain there is Boxing Day straight after Christmas Day, so the holiday is automatically longer.
4. On top of that, the work culture is much more laid back, so Britain effectively semi-shuts down for the entire period between Christmas and New Year, making the holiday period feel much longer.  I also suspect that the Christmas period generally  involves more work social events, extended lunches, and finishing early, than the more work-intensive U.S.A.
5. For better or worse, a British Christmas tends to involve more alcohol.
6. Perhaps linked to the above, Brits generally tend to be more reserved in everyday life, but they go a little crazy when they party and really let themselves go.  Americans tend to be more balanced in that they are more outgoing in general life and less crazy when it comes to partying.  
7. Most of the connotations of Christmas tend to be Wintry: reindeer, snow, etc.  This fits in well with Britain and the Northern U.S., but it can seem incongruous in the Southern states where the Winters are much milder.  Sorry, but seeing a snowman displayed next to a palm tree in Florida just looks wrong.
8. Americans are way more outgoing, and even brash (according to British tastes) in their decorations than the more conservative folks across the pond.  It is not uncommon to see entire houses, even streets lit up for the festive season in the U.S., which is much rarer in the U.K.  There often even appears to be a competitive element, with American neighbours attempting to outdo each other.
9. The U.S. "Culture Wars" often play out in the festive season, with high profile constitutional disputes over nativity scenes at public buildings etc.  In the U.K., where religion is less powerful/controversial and there is no legal separation of church and state, such disputes don't generally exist.  Although there is to some extent a politically correct movement in the U.K. that sometimes challenges the dominant role of Christianity, especially in non-Christian areas of the inner cities.  The disputes are minor in comparison, however, and not on the same scale as the U.S.
10. America has produced some of the great classic Christmas movies: It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, etc. but there is not quite the same tradition of T.V. Christmas specials which go on for about a month in the U.K.  Generally speaking, the modern U.S. tends to be a more movie orientated country, and the U.K. is more focused on T.V. and radio.

A pair of Christmas crackers.  Source: Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons

Finally, one tradition that you won't find in the U.S. is the pulling of Christmas crackers, which is done in the U.K. usually during the festive dinner. The cracker is pulled by two people, one at each end, it makes a crack/bang, and then the central cardboard chamber is ripped open to reveal a small present or puzzle, a festive paper hat in the shape of a crown, and a written joke that is traditionally read out to the other guests.

Kendal Mint Cake

One thing that my mother brought over to Florida at Christmas, which was very popular, were some fresh supplies of Kendal Mint Cake.  Mint cake is a form of confectionary made in my home town, for those who don’t know.  Although it’s called “cake” it comes in the form of a bar and has a harder, more sugary texture than cake.  It is also very minty, as its name suggests.

Anyway, my wife loves the stuff and although you can buy it here in the US, you have to order it via someone like Amazon and it’s expensive when bought that way (although I believe there are some slightly cheaper sources on eBay).

I actually worked in a mint cake factory one time as a summer job during my teenage years.  My main job was to break up broken mint cake bars into bite-sized chunks and put them into gift boxes.  There are three mint cake factories in Kendal: Quiggin’s, Romney’s, and Wilson’s.  I worked at Wilson’s.  The guy who ran it was called Andrew, but he was also known by some of the staff as, “Young Mr Wilson”.  His father, who was retired but still dropped by sometimes, was called, “Old Mr Wilson”.  Old Mr Wilson was the son of James, the guy who founded the Wilson’s brand back in 1913 (they would’ve probably called him “Ancient Mr Wilson”, were he still alive!).

There are three main types of mint cake: white, brown, and chocolate coated.  The colour and texture of the mint cake is decided by whether white or brown sugar is used in it.

Some of the mint cake my mother brought us

 

If you say that you are from Kendal to someone in the UK, they will sometimes mention Kendal Mint Cake.  Mint cake is also eaten a lot by mountaineers and artic explorers around the world, as it is a concentrated source of glucose (plus the mint clears your sinuses!)  Kendal Mint Cake has been taken up Mount Everest by Edmund Hilary and across the Antarctic by Sir Ernest Shackleton.

Here ends my lesson on my home town’s most famous confectionary.  But remember, if you ever come to Florida via Kendal to visit us, bring us some mint cake!

 

Jack Dee is EVIL!!!

Parental visit

There comes a time in every expat’s life when he gets a visit from across the ocean from his parents.  My time was this Christmas. 

My wife and I spent most of October, November, and December preparing the house – doing all the various DIY, obscure cleaning, and upgrade jobs that we’d been putting off.

Our place is small, so my mother and her partner stayed at a local hotel.  We picked them up and took them to the hotel on their first day to find that my mother had been made “Guest of the day”, which was a source of amusement for us.

Many of the things that my mother and her partner noticed about North Central Florida, I remembered noticing myself when I first visited several years ago, but they’ve since become my everyday normality, so I barely notice them anymore. They seemed surprised by how neat and tidy everything was.  Parts of Britain do certainly have severe litter problems, although like in  the USA, it can vary quite a bit from from place to place.

My mother and her partner are less flexible than me – although I moan about some things in the US, I am essentially a go-with-the-flow sort who likes to explore things.  When it comes to food, for instance, although I am lukewarm on certain elements of mainstream American eating, I do like many things about the Floridian diet, such as the fresh seafood, as well as Mexican and Cajun dishes (plus Chinese, Indian, Thai, Caribbean, and Italian).  My mother’s partner is much more conservative with his eating habits, however, so we ended up eating at places that served food such as “British Fish and Chips” (which is never quite like the real thing in the USA, anyway), rather than at the places where they serve a more local menu.

In a cafe in St Augustine

All in all the trip was a success, however.  We did start running out of touristy things to do with my parents towards the end, but that was kind of inevitable - Gainesville is essentially a working college town, not a holiday resort, so there are only so many sights to see.  We did manage to find some alligators for them to photograph, however, and take them on day trips to both the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, including a visit to America’s oldest continuously occupied settlement, St Augustine.

Why do the British love to party?

I was reminded by Rob over at The Inconsequential Opinion that Christmas tends to have a slightly more raucous edge to it back in Britain, which is encapsulated by some of the Christmas music, which includes songs by Slade and Wizzard that you don’t hear in the USA.  In fact, I don’t think I have been anywhere that loves a drunken party as much as the British.

I first talked about this topic back in the early 1990s with a Canadian.  We were in Germany, part of a group that included Germans, American, French, Irish and, of course, British and Canadians.  Anyway, it was observed that the English-speaking peoples have a tendency to enjoy getting drunk and going a little crazy, whereas the Germans and French tend to prefer to drink and act in a much more controlled way.

I would actually go further than what I agreed with my Canadian friend at the time and say that the British (and Irish) probably also top the English speaking peoples for raucous partying.  Americans, generally, are pretty civilized by comparison.  I was slightly amused by an American friend recently asking me whether a spoken poetry event that we attend at a local bar was too raucous for me, as from my perspective, it was generally not at all rowdy by British standards.  But her thoughts were understandable – what is usually projected to outsiders tends to be the rather quiet, civilized image of British culture and the other side is often glossed over.

Why do the Brits have this tendency?  I think we are a very schizophrenic group, who, being famously repressed in everyday life, every now and then need to blow off some steam and go a bit ga-ga.  The dark, damp weather is probably a factor too, it keeps you shut indoors and frankly, can get pretty depressing at times, especially in the North of England where I am from.

There is a pretty awful side to British partying culture too, of course, which never gets mentioned in the tourist adverts.  It’s virtually impossible to go through the centre of any major town or city on a Friday or Saturday night without encountering groups of extremely drunken (mainly, but not exclusively young) people spilling out of the bars and clubs, stumbling into the road, puking, groping, shouting, scrapping, swearing and collapsing… It can all seem rather hellish to the sober observer (I have spoken to more than one taxi driver that expressed their absolute horror when they first encountered British drinking culture after arriving from Pakistan).

But despite the downsides, when you’re brought up in British culture, it is difficult not to miss a little of the raucous edge when abroad.

My favourite Christmas song: A Fairytale of New York, by The Pogues and Kirsty McColl (which my wife described as “far too depressing for Americans” hehe!)