It's Christmas Day and saddo old me, I'm taking the time to blog rather than have a bit of Christmas pudding. Actually, I hate Christmas pudding, thus this blog entry. As a mancypino, I have obviously adopted quite a few British Christmas traditions and have decided not to take up a few others, too! After many years in the UK, I've observed a few unique British Christmas traditions, some of which I will outline below:
1) All those hideous Christmas songs! Not the classic carols like Silent Night or Jingle Bells, but the songs you find in compilation CDs: All I Want for Christmas (Mariah Carey), Wonderful Christmas Time (Paul McCartney), and my personal absolute hate, Cliff Richards' Mistletoe and Wine. From about mid-October they play these songs everywhere you go, it is simply impossible to avoid! Why does the general public have to be subjected to this kind of seasonal torture? Surely this is against human rights??
2) Manic food shopping. I went to the supermarket the other day just to replenish a few things I haven't got at home and my local Sainsbury's was a sight to behold. It was absolutely heaving! I saw one woman with a trolley filled with bread. A whole bloomin' trolley! It was as if the country was going to war, or everyone was feeding the 5,000 for Christmas. Supermarkets are only closed for one, two days, max? Surely there's no need to purchase 50 loaves of bread and 500 pints of milk for two days. It's utterly sinful!
3) Speaking of sinful, that's probably the best way to describe the copious amounts of chocolate given, received and consumed in homes across Britain. In the Philippines, where chocolate is crap, we don't have tins of 'Chocnut' or buckets 'Serg' in Filipino homes all over the country during the yuletide season. Over here, however, people are bombarded with Christmas edition tins of Roses, Celebrations and an assortment of Thorntons selections as early as October!
4) Christmas crackers. I love Christmas crackers! Not the ones you eat with cheese and wine, but the ones that you pull to get a cheap toy, a stupid joke and a silly hat.
5) Those unending sofa and furniture adverts. They are everywhere. If not on billboards on the street, they are all over the telly and on the radio advertising sofas so big, you'll need a mansion to fit one in your living room! There is no escape from it! If I see another advert in the next five minutes of writing this, I am going to throw this laptop at the telly!
6) And this last one is my favourite of all - The Christmas Sales. Nothing delights the senses of millions of women all over the world than that four letter word! I can't wait to get my bargains when the sales start on Boxing Day!
In the meantime, I'm off to watch the Queen's speech. Oh, the delights of a British Christmas!
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