For me, it’s always been the Alastair Sim version of A Christmas Carol.
And our new tradition (as of the past couple of years) is a viewing of Extras: The Extra Special Christmas Special.
No TV or movies on Christmas. Nope.
about 4 years ago one of my fraternity brothers mentioned that his family watched Jingle All The Way one year since it was one of the presents. then it stuck as a tradition. Now practically every member of my house has taken that tradition back home with him. I’m sure as heck going to keep it going as a tradition for my family.
HE’S IN MY HOUSE, EATING MY COOKIES!?
it’s a good excuse to watch phil hartman (to a lesser extent Arnold, and to an even lesser extent Sinbad) if nothing else.
If I’m spending the day surrounded by family celebrating the birth of the prince of peace I’m usually watching my back.
Quite a few Americans either watch some sort of sporting event (College football usually) or go out to the movies. Christmas is day for big movie releases for the studios.
If only this were still true, Wendell. There’s nothing that gladdens the heart more than a ten-foot-tall plastic snowman in someone’s garden! At the end of November! Ho Ho Ho. Those shitty flashing lights really set the whole ensemble off, and why not have fake snow and a unutterably fucking terrible reindeer on the roof, you useless fucking excuse for a human being. Wacky, It’s Christmas DIE DIE DIE .
I have no strong opinions about this. Well, I suppose I do. A really nice trend I think is for people who have a tree or a bush in the garden and thread it with white lights. That can be pretty magical, and just generally pretty. Gigantic flashing Santa can fuck off though.
I hope I don’t have to say that the venom in my previous post is not directed at Wendell Wagner at all. Reading it back to myself I thought I’d better clarify.
I think the point is that they didn’t have enough sympathy to stay at home. It’s like ‘sorry you’re stuck here, but on the other hand, I’m really glad you’re here running this theater.’ Not that one family deciding not to go out on Christmas would cause companies to close and let people have the day off, but still.
Sometimes we watch a bit of the dog show that comes on, but most of Christmas is usually spent making rounds to different parties.
I’ve seen plenty of Advent calendars (as well as other Advent traditions, like the Advent wreath and the Advent chain) in the US, and didn’t even realize that they were British.
Perhaps, as touched on earlier, it’s because we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Britain, so our Christmases have to do double duty, so to speak, and combine all the traditions and festivities that in the US are divided between the two holidays.
It was my observation while living in the U.K. that advent calendars are distinctly more common there than in the U.S., although as Chronos points out, they are known in the U.S. Doing a little Googling it appears that advent calendars are well known over much of Europe. Does anyone have any statistics (not anecdotes) about the relative commonness of advent calendars in the U.S. and the U.K.?
I thought the advent wreath with candles was a Roman Catholic thing. (that’s why it’s popular all over Europe)
I remember reading that in the UK they aired The Great Escape every Christmas. Do they still do that?
We always had an Advent calendar in school ( mid 50 s to mid 60 s Catholic grammar school.)
It’s used in Lutheran countries too, I know.
Advent calendars are huge in Scandinavia. You also get these great advent candles–tall tapers that are marked off into 24 segments and you burn a little each day. I need to order some more of those. I love advent calendars!
And in Denmark, they have an advent TV show with an episode every night…
I imagine that the number of segments varies from year to year? Or is advent demarcated differently there?
Among Catholics in the US, Advent starts on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, and thus can be anywhere from 22 to 28 days long.
I’ve never seen such a thing in Orthodox countries.
This would be the kind of advent calendar that starts on 12/1 and goes to 12/24.
[quote=“Kyla, post:47, topic:550760”]
It’s designed to protect the retail workers, so their bosses can’t force them to work on an important family day. Chalk it up to a cultural difference - we don’t get why your government lets the bosses treat people like shit, so…
I think that’s an apocryphal story. There was never a cast-iron tradition that certain movies are always shown at Christmas, it just feels like it sometimes (The Wizard of Oz and the Sound of Music would fit into this tale as well).