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.

Christmas Food and gifts Around the World: UK, USA, Europe and Singapore - turkey, Yule Cake and stollen

UK

In the UK the usual Christmas dinner is turkey with roast potatoes, sprouts, and cranberry sauce. 

Christmas pudding is served with custard. For added drama, some people set fire to the brandy. I have enough excitement in my life, without that worry. 

After lunch, 3 pm, you listen to the Queen's speech. More Champagne is sold at Christmas (and for New Year's Eve) than any other time of the year.

Homes have Christmas trees.  Hung with baubles (round or spherical ornaments). A star or angel is on top. Parcels, real containing presents, or empty

A big Norway Spruce is in Trafalgar Square, London, England. The tall tree was given by Norway to the UK after WW2 as a thank you for help. Carol singing, in aid of charity, and other performances take place around the tree. The tree, over 20 feet high, has to be the biggest gift I have ever seen.

I save wrapping paper. It is cheap after Xmas. 

After Christmas the prices of Christmas pudding come down. My husband likes to be given and to buy books. I have a lucky dip bag from when I was organizing events for Toastmasters and had to supply small gifts for lots of people. I went around Daiso and kept spotting things which looked useful. I over-bought.

Lucky dip usually works well. We get to pick out one item each, or two, or three. I and my husband are very strange. We like different things each year. What wasn't wanted two years ago, and raised a frown, (a puffer for cleaning a laptop keyboard) turned out to be just what was wanted a year later and was pounced on with glee. 

USA

Turkey is eaten at Thanksgiving so the Americans want a change at Christmas time. In the USA, Christmas pudding is called plum pudding. You can find it all year!

France

The French have yule cakes. Log cakes. You can make your own chocolate spiral cake, with chocolate icing on top. Use a fork to make wavy lines across the top. 

Germany

The Germans eat gingerbread biscuits, gingerbread men and gingerbread women and animals, make gingerbread houses. Best of all, they eat stollen! Stollen, with a centre of marzipan, is my favourite.

We have bought stollen in supermarkets in the UK, in Tesco, Stollen bites in Lidl (which is a German supermarket, low prices) ; and in Singapore this year from Cold Storage supermarket in Jellita shopping mall, a couple of stops on the bus from Holland Village.

Stollen in Tesco in the UK. Photo credit by Angela Lansbury.

Czech Republic

In Prague we had a hotel dinner (when all restaurants were fully booked in addition to charging high prices). The meal featured fish soup followed by carp with potato salad.

Alas, Christmas is over. But you can still buy plum pudding in the USA. You can look forward to panettone in the supermarkets in London, England, at Easter.

Useful Websites

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

Stollen, Marzipan covered in chocolate and other German food:

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

Youtube has many videos on making 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.

 

What to eat and buy, USA and Europe: Christmas Cake, Pudding, Panettone and Pandoro

On Christmas Day in England traditionally you eat Christmas pudding and at tea time Christmas cake. These are hot and cold versions of flour mixture made dark with brown sugar with the addition of dried fruits and often candied peel and nuts.

Plum Pudding
The Americans have plum pudding which seems the same at Christmas pudding except that you cannot sell it as a novelty and must have at . Looking at ingredients when I lived in the USA I saw no plums. Like British mince pies, short for mincemeat pies, which contain no meat nowadays.

Christmas puddings look like they date back to earlier ages, before the rise of tinned fruit and frozen fruit. Then sugar and dried fruits and nuts were luxuries special occasions and dried fruits more available than fresh fruit.

Christmas Pudding
Christmas pudding is served hot, usually with yellow custard, possibly with the addition of alcoholic sauce such as brandy. A sprig of holly on top is optional decoration, usually for magazine photographs. (We have holly in our garden in the UK but I've never met anybody who wanted non-edible decorations which need washing and prick your fingers.)

Panettone
When Panettone first appeared in England we had the Panettone Classico, plain sweet cake with sultanas. But now we can buy chocolate chip panettone in Waitrose and Tesco. In Home Sense and La Dolce Vita I saw many more varieties. (See my previous posts on Panettone.)


Pandoro With the Star

Italian pandoro from Sainsbury's. Somebody took this to a Christmas party for Toastmasters International speakers'  club Harrovians. Nobody knew how to open the box. We eventually decided to cut the top rather than the bottom of the box, so that leftovers could be taken home on the box. As the cake is wider underneath, removing the cake through the narrower top opening was a challenge. However, we squeezed it and pulled and squashed it a bit. Finally we succeeded in extracting it through the top of the box.

After a few minutes we recalled that pandora means golden (colour) cake, because of the yellow colour. (Reminiscent of the three kings (or wide men) who brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, according to the story of the Maji in Mathew (I remember M M for Maji and Mathew) in The New Testament.

I saved the box, which came from Sainsbury's. Only after I got home did I see the way you are supposed to cut the cake. I also discovered a sachet of icing sugar at the bottom of the box. I must admit we had all hacked away at the top of the cake. It had seemed a bit dry, compared to the home made tiramisu. But the first time I tried panettone I thought it was dry and tasteless. Three years later, it is a favourite, eaten every day in December with coffee for elevenses, or at tea time.

I think back to my childhood and teenage years before the year 2000. Then Christmas pudding and Christmas cake were the only novelty foods which I saw for dessert and tea time at Christmas in England. Now panettone is in every shop - I have seen them in: Home Sense, Morrisons, Tesco, Waitrose. 

I wonder whether pandoro will be the next big thing next year, December and Christmas 2016. At least, next time, I shall know that you are supposed to slice the cake horizontally, use the template on top to cut out the five point star, and scatter icing through the star shape hole to make a five point star pattern in icing on the top.

Do you know how to get the cake out of the tapered box? Do you know how to turn the cake into a star shape and get the white star on top? Follow the teeny scissors symbols on the box. Now I look at the box again, I see a five point star, which is the traditional depiction of the star over Behtlehem, where Jesus was born and where the Maji went to visit. But the six point star on the box also suits the festival of Hanukah (whose real symbol is the nine branch hanukkah). So next year the star shape cake can be adapted to suit anybody and everybody.

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

See my posts and profiles and follow me on blogger, Facebook, LinkedIn and watch me on You tube. Buy my books from Amazon or lulu.com and get them signed if you see me at a writers' or speakers' meeting.