Winter Celebrations Worldwide

 

UK

Turkey with stuffing.

Christmas cake

Christmas Carols

Christmas Crackers containing a paper hat and a riddle and usually a tiny toy or puzzle.

Christmas Pudding

Mince Pies

On Fridays a Toastasters International Club, Online Dynamic, meets to practice speeches. I gave a speech about winter festivals around the world. I also gave this in person at HOD the evening before.

Ice Skating on artificial Outdoor Rinks

Pantomime

Santa's Grotto in Department Stores

TV family films such as The Sound of Music and American movie Home Alone, a slapstick comedy about a child who beats a couple of bungling would-be burglars.

USA

Candy Cane. Red and swhite spirals of sugar, resembling a shepherd's crook. They recall the story of the shepherds who, as the Christmas carol goes, watched their flocks by night.

Plum pudding (like Christmas pudding) is available all year, although more prolifically at Christmas.

Turkey is eaten for Thanksgivingso most Americans don't want to eat it again at Christmas.

BELIZE

Used to be called British Honduras and still has British traditions with an added Central American flavour.

Christmas carols played by steel bands.

Fairy lights on palm trees. (The lights are not installed by cranes but by local agile young men who climb the tree, sometimes hanging upside down as a stunt to amuse and astonish passers-by. 

FRANCE

Yule logs cakes with chocolate topping, recalling the tree trunks chopped up for fires giving light and heat in winter before we had electric lights and heating..

GERMANY

Stollen - a cake or soft sweet bread with sultanans, shaped like a log, with a rod of yellow marzipan horizontally down the centre. 

Marzipan is ground almonds mixed with fine sugar, bound together by liquid such as egg white?

ITALY and Roman Catholic churches

Nativity scenes in churches.

Panettone, a large dome shaped soft sweet dough bread. Nowadays you can buy it not only with traditioal luurious cut dandied peel and sultanas, but, instead chocolate chips, and fillings ingredients and numerous flavours. 

Italians claim it comes from Northern Italy, specifically Milan, and a specific bakery.

SPAIN

Panettone, same as Italy.

Songs such as Feliz Navidad.

VENEZUELA

Panettone.

December 21st - was the December solistice and the first day of winter - planning your seasonal trips and outings

 

December 21st was the first day of winter and the solstice. What does that mean?

For travellers, it means that in the UK the 21st is the shortest day. That is good news. From now onwards, every day there is a little more light. 

Is there anything good for travellers about short days? Early dusk means more of the darker evenings on which to enjoy the Xmas lights in the streets, the lights up the lamp posts in high streets (Americans say main street), and the Christmas trees. Now is a good time to dash and take photos of the local lights. 

How long will the lights be up?

I looked it up in Wikipedia. Which was very illuminating. 

UT date and time of
equinoxes and solstices on Earth^[1][2]

event	equinox		solstice		equinox		solstice
month	March[3]		June[4]		September[5]		December[6]
year	day	time	day	time	day	time	day	time
2017	20	10:29	21	04:25	22	20:02	21	16:29
2018	20	16:15	21	10:07	23	01:54	21	22:22
2019	20	21:58	21	15:54	23	07:50	22	04:19
2020	20	03:50	20	21:43	22	13:31	21	10:03
2021	20	09:37	21	03:32	22	19:21	21	15:59
2022	20	15:33	21	09:14	23	01:04	21	21:48
2023	20	21:25	21	14:58	23	06:50	22	03:28
2024	20	03:07	20	20:51	22	12:44	21	09:20
2025	20	09:02	21	02:42	22	18:20	21	15:03

The day is the same every year. But the time of sunrise and sunset varies. The length of time between dawn and dusk stays the same, but the times of dawn and dusk vary. (Well I never. Who knew? Maybe you. Not me. Well, we all know now.

Why would the dawn times affect travellers? If would affect you if you wanted to see dawn at Stonehenge or any landmark which is supposed to have been constructed to look special on the day of the Solstice.

This chart seems odd to me.

Dusk on Dec 22 in London is just before 4 pm. That was an awkward time for lighting Hanukah lights for a dinner event starting at 6.30 pm. Fortunately the hosts were not so religious that they insisted on lighting the candles at dusk.

Earlier in the week for day three of Hanukkah, we had three hanukiahs, one lit by the lady from each of three couples. 

Current Time:	22 Dec 2022, 12:10:52
Next Equinox:	20 Mar 2023 21:24 (Vernal)
Sunrise Today:	08:04↑ 128° Southeast
Sunset Today:	15:53↑ 232° Southwes

Sunrise at Stonehenge. Photo by Mark Grant in Wikipedia.

Centuries ago, in fact, as recently as our great grandparents time, (I am writing in 2022) there was no TV. Street lighting came in in the 1800s, house lights, later. So the time of dawn and dusk affected your travel. 

Scottish Winter Food

Dawn and dusk also affected meal times. Up north in England they had high tea, a combination of tea and supper, with a savoury course or grill followed by filling sweet cakes or buns.  Christmas pudding and Christmas cake contained dried fruit and often alcohol as a preservative, with hot custard. Almonds might be added, arranged in a circular, concentric, pattern on top as in Dundee cake.

Stonehenge Summer solstice from Wikipedia on Solstice

The Soltice - meaning

The word solstice is derived from the Latin sol ("sun") and sistere ("to stand still").

Why? Because at the solstices, the Sun's declination appears to "stand still"; that is, the seasonal movement of the Sun's daily path (as seen from Earth) pauses at a northern or southern limit before reversing direction.

When I am planning a trip, I check on the temperature of the destination in the month I will be travelling. You also want to check the season and school holidays.

Australians visit the UK for Christmas, which is their long, summer holiday. We used to go skiing in New Zealand 

Museums

Many museum opening days vary with the seasons. Some museums close for winter and open in spring. Others have last admission half an hour before closing time. 

The food served varies. Hotel and restaurant prices may be high for Christmas and New Year, and the whole of December, or including the first week of January. Sign up for your favourite restaurants and hotels. One year in the Lake district we stopped at a famous restaurant, the Miller Howe, and signed up for their newsletter. In the spring we received an offer for three nights for the price of two, or two for the price of one. Whatever it was, it made the difference between never going, and a once in a lifetime experience. 

I visited Harrow School in England in the winter. The school had a guided tour which I read about in the local newspaper. I was surprised that they had a tour in winter. They had the winter tours because Australians came over and joined the tours. I met an Australian teacher who was on her summer break during my winter in the UK.

Useful Websites

For the time of dusk

https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/uk/london?month=12

Stollen - yes' you can buy it in Singapore. At Cold Storage, Jellita, worldwide, or make your own.

Stollen - German Christmas cake, log shape, with a marzipan centre. In the huge Cold Storage at Jellita I asked an assistant to point out the stollen and on a large display I saw three varieties. 

Three types of stollen in a supermarket in Singapore. 

One packet trumpeted traditional. Another attracted me with almonds. The third mentioned marzipan. Ah! The picture showed the yellow centre. That was the one we bought. 

Photo shortly. When I find where the family have hidden it from me! 

How much did it cost? Eleven Singapore dollars or more, depending on the size and ingredients. 

(I had searched in vain for Stollen previously in other supermarkets, such as Fairprice in Bukit Panjang.) Last night at an online Toastmasters International meeting of the Nee Soon South Toastmasters, the President who was Topics Master of the Day asked, 'What is your favourite Christmas food?" 

For a moment, I thought, Christmas pudding. But I decided to mention stollen, which is less well known. 

I succeeded at selling the idea. The topics master asked me for the recipe.  I advised her to do what we do with French recipes. Go the country of origin, find a recipe, and run it through Translate Google. 

Simple English wiki says

Stollen (German pronunciation: [ˈʃtɔlən] (listen) or [ʃtɔln] (listen)) is a fruit bread of nuts, spices, and dried or candied fruit, coated with powdered sugar or icing sugar. It is a traditional German bread eaten during the Christmas season, when it is called Weihnachtsstollen (after "Weihnachten", the German word for Christmas) or Christstollen (after Christ).

Simple wiki shows this picture

The general Wikipedia article has much more information. 

Stollen is stocked in supermarkets until Christmas. In Germany it was originally a pre-lent food. It is sold by the slice in the outdoor or indoor Christmas markets in Germany. If the shops are out of stock, or it is out of season, you can make your own.

You might want to allow time for the currants and raisins to soak overnight in alcohol, and for the bread to rise is using yeast. You can buy the candied peel and marzipan or almond paste, or make your own. 

Almond Paste

Almond paste has bigger chunks of almond but less sugar and is designed for spreading and cooking, rather than Marzipan which is sometimes sold as a thicker solid lump, texture like fudge, for carving (or spreading on top of cakes. 

Beware Of The Sugar Content

My late father was diabetic and loved marzipan. When I went to buy it, I was horrified to see that one month the blocks of marzipan were fifty per cent sugar. But the next month - even worse, 75% sugar!

What is Frangipane?

Frangipane is not just the Italian word for marzipan, as I used to think, wrongly, I have just learned. Frangipane has extra ingredients besides the sugar and almonds, flour, eggs and milk, maybe more. It is more like an almond flavoured yellow custard.

YouTube has many videos on how to make stollen and one on the factory in Germany which makes stollen.

Useful Websites

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stollen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stollen

My previous DIY stollen made using a Tesco kit, Waitrose bites and more.

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2017/11/almonds-marzipan-stollen-and-costa.html

Recipes

Without the marzipan but with pecans (leave out nuts for those allergic to nuts)

https://recipes.fandom.com/wiki/German_Stollen_Bread

https://www.internationaldessertsblog.com/german-christmas-stollen-recipe/

Complete guide including the marzipan

https://www.daringgourmet.com/stollen-german-christmas-bread/

Recipes

https://germanfoods.org/recipes/dresdner-stollen/

Buy Online

https://germanfoods.org/shop-german-foods/?s=&bc-sort=featured&bigcommerce_category=christmas-cakes-and-stollen

About the Author Angela Lansbury

BIOGRAPHY

Angela Lansbury B A Hons ACG ALB PM5 EH5 DL5 VC5 
The Author of several books including  Etiquette For Every Occasion. Wedding Speeches & Toasts. How to be the Best Man. Quick Quotations. Who Said What When.

Blogs travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

translateforfun.blogspot.com

Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters Speakers Club Vice President Public Relations (VPPR), Previous President

Join BHA 1st Wednesday 7pm and 3rd Saturday 2 pm Singapore time 

Vice President Public Relations (VP PR) of Tampines Changkat Advanced;

Secretary of weekly online Singapore International Dynamic Toastmasters Speakers’ Club;

Member and past president of Harrovians toastmasters club, UK; Past member of HOD Toastmasters, London. Past member in Singapore of: Toastmasters Club of Singapore (TCS); Tiarel; and Senja Cashew.

More details from Toastmasters International find a club.

Regular attendee at annual Swanwick Writers’ School, England.

Regular attendee at annual Writers’ Holiday, Wales.

Contributor to poetry readings, and after tea courses on: Speaking On Radio To Promote Books; and Plots And Character.

Winner of many club and area speaking contests in the UK and Singapore.

Language advisor to Empire Toastmasters club in Indonesia.

Language and speech workshops in Singapore.

Speaker on radio and TV in England, Scotland, the USA, and Australia.

Compiler of a school course on public speaking for teachers to prepare pupils for school open days with attending ceremonies before government ministers, Singapore.

Former member of Harrow Writers’ Circle, London, and two writing groups in Singapore.

Angela is on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter. She would be delighted to link up with new friends.

 Please share links to your favourite posts.

Top twenty desserts - here's my list - what's yours? Where to see, eat, try and buy or make them - anticipating Xmas holiday meals

Would you like a cake like dessert to finish lunch, or dinner? A surprise to make a grand end to a dinner party?

What about Christmas? In England people make Christmas cake or Christmas cake well in advance. The alcohol helps preserve it.

The French instead have buche Noel. 

The Italians, Spanish and Venezuelans have Panetonne. It keeps in a tin for months. 

1 Sicilian Pishacio layer cake 

(muffin)

Italian. In the UK from Etna Cafe

 

2 Lokshen Pudding

Jewish, Ashkenazi style, from B & K

Lokshen pudding from B & K, Hatch End. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Noodles with succulent sultanas (large dried grapes from the island of that name) and lemon juice for added flavour.

3 Christmas cake or wedding cake or fruit cake with yellow marzipan and white icing. Make sure it has almonds, marzipan, not just white icing. The hard icing helps keep it moist. The marzipan adds flavour, and nutrition from the almonds.

English

From Wiki.

Recipe from

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Christmas_Cake

4 Stollen with a Marzipan centre

German

From Marks & Spencer or Tesco and other supermarkets around Christmas holiday time

Check the picture to see the amount of almond paste in the centres.

5 Yemas de Cartagena

Spanish

Cartagena is in the Murcia region of South East Spain, up the cost from Marbella. We tried this declidious dessert in a Parador hotel, a former historic ruin reconstructed and turned into a tourism-attracting hotel as part of the nationwide network serving local food.

Yemas are eggs. We had a creamy dessert in the hotel.

There are also wonderful solid chestnut or almond bars or bite size pieces in divided chocolate boxes. 

https://nativespain.com/celebrations/christmas/turron-de-yema-tostada-spanish-christmas-egg-yolk-turron-spanish-recipe/

6 Apple Strudel

B & K deli take away or eat it, Hatch End or Edgware in NW London, England 

Apple Strudel. Pastry folded over filling of apple chunks. Photo by Angela Lansbury

7 Baklava

With real nuts. Avoid the sort made with cheaper peanuts.

Greek and middle European and middle eastern.

Baklava in Sofia, capital of Bulgaria. Wiki.

8 Summer Pudding

From Waitrose.

9 Bread and Butter Pudding

Bread pudding, or bread and butter pudding. Layers of bread soaked in milk. With sultanas or raisins.

10 New York style Cheesecake

Baked. A cake. Not a mousse! 

From Carnegie deli in Wikipedia.

11 Tarte Tatin

French apple torte. Also known as upside down cake. Thin pastry base and thinly sliced apples with apricot see-through glaze.

Can also be made with pears. Overlapping slices in a circle, or on a grid.

12 Mango Sticky Rice pudding 

Fresh mango and sticky rice. Singapore and Asian countries. Thailand. The Philippines uses coconut and chocolate.

13 Ipswich Almond Pudding

A cold dessert. Unusual. A great cake if you can't cook or don't want to risk something going wrong, or want to prepare in advance. I found the recipe in a looseleaf file or regional UK recipes issued by the tourist board years ago. We used to make this for dinner parties when we were just married. 

You use sponge fingers as the base and sides, soaking them in milk plus alcohol. Add layers of alternating double cream with ground almonds, more soaked sponge fingers, and whipped double cream. Refrigerate to help it to set and keep the cream fresh. Even better the next day when evaporation intensifies the flavour.

14 Surprise Mock Egg

From the now no longer Haro restaurant which was at Little Bedwyn. We would drive hours there and back for their expensive but exquisite meals on special occasions such as a birthday or wedding anniversary. The egg served like a boiled egg in an egg cup with a meringue outside and a mango flavoured yellow inside. 

To counteract over sweetness and add crunch and sustaining cereal, a salted shortbread biscuit as a reminder of the oblong 'finger' slice of toast dipped in a boiled egg when we were children.

Photo by Angela Lansbury.

15 Chocolate Lava Cake/ Melted Chocolate Puddings/ Chocolate Fondant (Chocolate bomb)

Served at Petrus (expensive) and many other restaurants. Other versions have cold white ice cream centres for contrasting colour.

Hot outside chocolate pudding with molten chocolate or chocolate pudding centre.

French bombe glacee from Wiki.

Chocolate with ice cream centre was the dessert at the wedding of Queen Elizabeth II.

16 Welsh cakes

Best served fresh and hot with melting butter. I had them hot at tea time in the Fishguard Hotel in Wales at Writers' Holiday.

17 Meringue with fruit - Pavlova

Hard white meringue base ring with chopped or whole fresh fruit in the circular centre, such as strawberries. The national dish of Australia and New Zealand, both countries claiming it was invented there. Broken up meringue in the UK is called Eton Mess. Easier to make.

From Wiki.

18 Christmas Pudding

UK. Americans serve it all year and call it plum pudding.

Heston Blumenthal added a whole citrus fruit in the middle. This was sold through supermarkets at a premium price.

Photo by Angela Lansbury.

19 Large thin Crepes (Pancake) with Grand Marnier liqueur.

Feature of Mont St Michel in the north of France.

20 Salzburger Knockerl

A huge dish to be shared. In Austrial we had soft meringues floating in sauce. Salzburg. Vienna.  The French version is Isles flottentes or floating islands.

Post draft saved to guard against loss. More text and photos being added.

For tea time in the UK we like hot crumpets with butter and jam. Some people like waffles, which come in at least two varieties, Belgian, thick, with the square or oblong holes, and American, thin, any shape, and can be served for breakfast, or Vietnamese as a snack, round thin and folded over the filling.

I haven't mentioned my former favourites which no longer have a novelty value.

1 Crème brulée or burned cream. 

2  Pot de chocolate (chocolate pot).

3 Fruit salad with caramelised ginger which we make at home.

4 Gulub Jam/Jamun. Indian. Two or three balls in syrup. Our favourite dessert in Indian restaurants (which is London are often owned by Pakistanis or people from Bangldesh who have lived in London for years.) We like it more than kulfi (Indian ice cream). We bought a packet mix from Mustaphas' store in Singapore. However, we found it hard to keep the balls from falling apart. 

Useful Websites

https://nativespain.com/celebrations/christmas/turron-de-yema-tostada-spanish-christmas-egg-yolk-turron-spanish-recipe/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_chocolate_cake

About the Author

Angela Lansbury was born and bred in Britain, and has lived in the USA and Singapore. Her family have worked in or lived in Spain and Switzerland. She is a member of Toastmasters Clubs meeting on Zoom with visitors from the UK and USA, India, Sri Lanka, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. Through the Toastmasters mentoring program Angela has connected with individuals in Vietnam and Romania, a different connection each month. Please come to the next BHA Toastmasters meeting on the 3rd Saturday afternoon every month. 

Christmas Customs, Food and Drink Around The World - turkey, carp, midnight mass, Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, stollen and panettone

Turkey lunch.

Christmas dinner in London consists of turkey with red cranberry sauce, green Brussels sprouts and roast potatoes. Other options include a bread or bread and chestnut stuffing; and small sausages wrapped in bacon, called pigs in blankets.

Why turkey? To make a change. Because a turkey is larger therefore more convenient when you have extra visitors to entertain to a Christmas meal. After that, what's next?

Christmas Pudding

This hearty, filling dish is followed by dark, dried fruit Christmas pudding. Accompanied by cream.

I find this too rich. I prefer the contrasting colour of yellow custard. 

Christmas Pudding in Dona Theresa Restaurant, Hatch End. The restaurant used to find customers were ringing another Dona Theresa Restaurant elsewhere in London, so the restaurant name was change to Zia Theresa, meaning Aunt Theresa.

You can see on the right of the picture the words Dona Theresa, which is hte name of a restaurant in Hatch End.

An individual Xmas pudding with a single portion of cream at a Christmas dinner in an Italian restaurant in Hatch End, London, England. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

We used to make a Christmas pudding weeks in advance. As it dries out, the flavour improves. An alcoholic drink can be added to the mixture as a preservative.

Another year, we bought three small size Christmas puddings from different supermarkets and compared them. When we made our choice, we bought a large one for Christmas Day.

This went on for years. Until the revolution. Heston Blumenthal introduced a citrus fruit in the middle of a Xmas pudding. The novelty sold out.

Now it has become a Xmas staple. Not cheap. Sixteen pounds sterling when I looked on Dec 17 2020.

In England Xmas pudding is sold for Xmas. The price comes down in January. 

When we went America we found that Xmas pudding was available all year. But it was known by its old name, plum pudding. A pudding made, no longer with plums, but with dried fruit such as currants.

As a child growing up in in London, England, I assumed that turkey, Christmas pudding, and Christmas cake were all the standard all over the world. To a limited extent this is true, Many countries, those still in the Commonwealth, continue to enjoy the old traditions. Europe does things differently.

However, the English speaking Americans also don't eat turkey at Christmas. Why? Because they have already had turkey for Thanksgiving dinner in November. 

When we spent Christmas in Prague, Czech Republic, we had Christmas dinner there at our hotel. The main dish was fish. 

Afterwards we went to midnight mass at the nearby church. The service was in the Czech language. No translation into German, Russian nor English. Luckily, we could copy the others standing up and sitting down when instructed to do so by the priest. I could see the page numbers of the hymn book of the lady standing next to me. I recognized some of the famous music. If I remember rightly, we recognized Silent Night, Ave Maria and a classical piece of music.

In England, after Christmas Day dinner (lunch), when we Brits are in England, we watch the Queen's Speech. (Actually it is called the Queen's Christmas message. The  Queen's speech is what she give to Parliament when she opens it after their recession.)

It's a treat to hear the Queen speaking the Queen's English. Here I am at Heathrow airport, London, England, beside a cut out model of the queen.

Tea time is the time when we produce the Christmas Cake. A heavy fruit cake. With white icing on top. Reminding you of snow. Most supermarkets can supply miniature cake topping such as red hat Santas, green plastic Christmas trees, reindeer.

Or you can buy a complete cake. Marks and Spencer usually stock one in a round, square or oblong shape. It must have marzipan under the icing. Make sure the expiry date is after Xmas day!

One year we left for Singapore before Xmas. I bought a Xmas cake. When I got it home, I discovered that the expiry date was before Xmas day.

Again, I had always assumed Xmas cake was universal. Until the foods of Europe reached the UK supermarkets.

Another British favourite is mince pies. Found everywhere in supermarkets. Cheap.

Mince pie.

Yule Log

If you visit Prague for Xmas, as we did, you can see the statue of composer Smetana, and a star commemorating him in the walk of fame.

France offers the world what the Americans call the Yule log. The English call it a log cake. The French call it buche noel. (Not to be confused with the French word bouche which means mouth.) This alternative cake can be a a Swiss roll, or spiral of sponge, with a chocolate covering, You scrape the chocolate icing with the tines of a fork to make it look like a log. Reminders of a log fire to warm you at Christmas time, in the snowy winter.

Stollen - Germany

Stollens are a solid roll shape cake with a scattering of dried fruit inside, white icing sugar covering the outside and, ideally, a marzipan centre. Stollens vary wildly in size and marzipan content. You can buy a traditional large roll, or cheaper individual miniature portions, which is more calorie controlling. 

Stollens could have a large marzipan centre, a thin one like a pencil, or, disappointingly, no marzipan at all. If you are a marzipan addict, check the ingredients and/or photo on the packaging before buying. 

Small individual stollen.

Large stollen.

Stollen with individual filling.

One year I bought a stollen ingredients kit. I wanted to know how it is made. Simple, really. Soak dried fruit overnight. Next day, mix up a batter. Add the fruit, well distributed. Roll out your soft marzipan into the length of the intended cake. Roll the marzipan in the cake mixture. Bake. Dust with icing sugar. However, the results were not as good as the top quality ones. Timing is critical to get it done but soft, with enough marzipan but not too much. 

Marzipan is basically ground almonds mixed with fine sugar. When my late father was diagnosed with late-onet diabetes, which is diet related, I started checking sugar content of everything I bought. I found that marzipan content varied from 75% almonds for the dearer brands, to fifty percent sugar for the cheaper supermarkets own brand. 

Panettone - Italy, Spain and Venezuela

More photos and text and websites will be added later.

See Statues of Smetana in Prague.

To sum up, you can enjoy the best of every country now in supermarkets around the world. My top three countries for Christmas are the UK, Singapore and America. The UK has Christmas decoration and crackers in window displays and restaurants. Singapore has street lights and decorated malls. American has giant displays on home lawns and rooftops and office blocks and skyscrapers.

Useful Websites

https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/heston-from-waitrose-hidden-orange-christmas-pudding/700239-99398-99399

About the Author

Angela Lansbury is a travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, fashionista. Please share links to your favourite posts or one or more of the blogs

travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

Not White Christmas? No Gifts? Christmas In Hot Countries? Christmas for non-Christians? Jews? Atheists?

"What's different about Xmas in another country?

Asia
In Singapore you can see green Xmas trees, but increasingly neon trees of all colours.


 Hot countries are increasingly importing artificial snow and ice rinks as a Xmas novelty.

At one time the French Yule log and the German stollen were only seen in their countries of origin However, now you can buy them in British supermarkets and in Singapore.

India
I remember visiting a large hotel in India over the Xmas period. Their hallway and dining room had Xmas trees, featuring white lights.

Singapore Xmas Trees & Lights

UK


British Christmas
The Christmas lights are lit in the main shopping streets of London, Oxford Street and Regent Street. Families travel into central London to see the lights on the streets. Another attraction is the department stores, Selfridges, Harrods and Hamleys toy store.

The biggest tree is the Norway spruce in Trafalgar Square in central London.

Photo by Diliff in Wikipedia.


When I was a child, we escaped to Spain for warm weather at Christmas.


My parents avoided the expense of a tree and Christmas presents and restaurants charging extra for meals on Xmas Day and Boxing Day. In Spain they celebrate Christmas in January and in much of Europe it is either on the 5th, the even of the 6th, or the 6th.

"Since you are British, tell us about  the UK?" I was asked this at Changi Simei Toastmasters Club in Singapore during the impromptu speaking session. The Toastmasters International impromptu speech session is known as table topics because in the early days you would pick topics off the table.

I thought about Christmas cake, which you can buy in Singapore, Christmas trees, and Christmas crackers.

Christmas Crackers
I asked how many people were familiar with Christmas crackers. Not many people.

DIY Christmas Crackers
I tried to describe Xmas crackers. I now realize that I need a large picture of Xmas crackers to carry around.

The story of Christmas Crackers is in Wikipedia. The inventor, Tom Smith, started with a sweet shop. Necessity is the mother of invention. He wrapped his sweets in twisted paper. Then to beat rivals made the wrapped sweets bigger, adding toys, printed mottoes and cheap folded paper hats.

He sat by a fire and heard it crackle and pop. the noise inspired him to add the sound which went pop when you pulled the cracker. The cracker was eventually called cracker, onomatopaeia, imitating the sound.

Researching Christmas Customs
When I was teaching English from home as a home tutor I used to set homework essays for my pupils on seasonal subjects. I would be asked to explain Xmas customs and symbols or even the meaning of words such as holly and mistletoe and Santa and cracker or the ingredients of Christmas cake.

The local free newspaper which dropped through my letterbox or could be picked up in supermarkets and shops carried articles on Diwali and Hanukah and Christmas.

Hanukah Lights


For Christmas, I found the Ladybird book on Christmas customs was useful.

Christmas History
Which came first?
Christmas Cake
Christmas Card
Christmas Cracker
Christmas Tree

USA Xmas


Xmas tree in front of Rockefeller Centre, New York, USA. Wikipedia.

Travel Destinations
UK
Trafalgar Square - see the Xmas tree. Hear the Xmas carols.

Useful Websites
Wiki Xmas Cracker
Xmas tree Trafalgar Square
Travel to UK
singaporeair.com

About The Author
Angela Lansbury
Travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Christmas isn't over yet! Decorations, celebrations, January 6th and leftovers all year

Neighbours in London, England, celebrating with mistletoe. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright. (From their life story which I edited and printed for them from their reminiscences, entitled: Soup and Sympathy.)

It's New Year and the Christmas decorations look so limply last year. Should I clear Santa's red hats and the green plastic tree and the Christmas crackers with Santa in a red nose ready for New Year's gold and glitter?

Answer
We had a debate on this. We could have put away the plastic green tree and replaced it with the white one. Then we decided that we would celebrate the traditional 12 days of Christmas to get our moneys-worth from the money spent and more time value from the time spent.

You may think differently, clear up fast, if you go back to work on January 2nd, or even January 1st. Who goes back to work so early?

1 Doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and admin staff.
2 Fire and police.
3 Shop owners and staff, especially those running sales on clothes, household goods, electricals.
4 Teachers at schools or running holiday classes for those still on holiday.
5 People working for themselves, in offices and from home.
6 Retired people writing their novel or running on-line businesses.
7 Lawyers and solicitors and court staff.
8 People working in transport, buses, trains, planes, car hire.
9 Restaurants and fast food and supermarkets and corner stores (convenience stores).
10 Bloggers.

January Celebrations In Spain And Europe
European countries following a different calendar celebrate the magi or three wise men. In Spain when my late parents lived there in the winter, (renting out their flat in summer) we used to watch the parade in nearby villages such as Estepona, where costumed figures on horseback would throw sweets to the excited children.

If you want to go to Spain or a European country where they celebrate on January 5th, or 6th, there's still time to book.

Leftover Food To Buy
In the UK we can buy Christmas puddings, Christmas cakes and mince pies left over from Christmas at bargain prices. The same goes for wrapping paper and Christmas cards if you want to stock up for next year, and Santa outfits.

Saving Christmas Pudding and Christmas Cake
In theory you can keep a Christmas pudding or Christmas cake in a cool dark place for several days or weeks (check packaging). The paper packaging is a help. A tin is even better, especially one with a good seal. Or a plastic box such as Tupperware. Check the packaging and the item you have bought if separate.

Preservatives include alcohol such as brandy in the pudding. Alcohol, a wine expert tells me, discourages mould. (Alcohol is an antiseptic).

Christmas Pudding
We indulged in Waitrose's Christmas pudding by chef Heston.

I asked the family, "Have we finished our Heston's Chrismas pudding?"
"Nowhere near. Maybe half way."

To my astonishment, the date on the packet says, end by 2019! So it would keep until next year - if we didn't finish it throughout this holiday season Christmas 2017-New Year 2018.

Icing
Icing is supposed to stop a cake from drying out. How? The icing is sealing the contents, from air, holding the moisture in.

Reading cookery books, you get the impression that icing is designed for the cake maker rather than the cake eater. I originally thought the purpose of icing was simply when making cake you could write visibly with chocolate or piping.

The hard icing on wedding cakes helps support the top tier. On Christas cakes the firm icing, as it dries and hardens all the better, will support little plastic trees which might otherwise fall over. Icing has many uses, not just smoothly concealing bumps in lumpy cake!

Apart from Christmas cakes, what other post-Christmas bargains can you find in the supermarket?

French Yule Logs
In France, they have yule log cakes, which are now sold in the UK. Brexit won't stop this. Supermarkets have customers from all over the world, and we have all got accustomed to buying a variety of international goods and goodies.

The French yule logs, German Stollen, and Italian Panettone are also likely to be reduced in price after Christmas and in January, especially if they are in Xmas themed packaging. Yule comes from the old pagan festival celebrating trees, hence our Christmas trees, traditionally with the fairy on top. The fairy can be converted to an angel if you prefer symbols you can associate with Christmas.

Italian restaurants and coffee shops, with a little help from supermarkets such as Waitrose and Tesco, have introduced panettone to a wider public.

The spelling of panettone used to challenge me. It is not tonne. You may have tons of panettone. Single N like the British word ton. However, double t. It's like a panet with tone. Panet-tone. Remove the imaginary hyphen. Double T. Panettone.

Preserving Panettone
After last Christmas, I kept panettone in a tin for months. My Italian cake progressively dried out and lost flavour. However, it could be dunked in coffee.

If it's dry, why not just throw it away. It depends how desperate you are to save money and save the planet from waste. Waste not, want not, the English saying goes.

When the panettone was too dry for dunking in coffee, that last of it could be used as a base for bread pudding, spiced up with sultanas, soaked in run if you like. Alternatively, you could use if to for trifle.

We went on a diet so I kept quiet about it. Eventually I forgot I still had it.

Then every now and then it came in handy. It was an emergency food when outside looked cold or dark and I didn't want to go out shopping. I'd be thinking, "I wish I had piece of cake. Please God - ah a piece of panettone - thank you!"

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.