Fewer people seem to be doing the whole 'Traditional English Christmas' thing - Don't get me wrong, the pikeys who live on the ring-road near me have all got their retina scorching poundshop illuminations up, especially the ones who've managed to jemmy the inspection hatch off the streetlight outside their house so that they can plug them in for free. And there's a girl in my local Tesco that's wearing a Santa hat unironically (I think she is anyway, I'd ask her, but I really can't be bothered to explain what ironically means)...
But not a Traditional Christmas, like in the old days.
I mean, how many of you are intending to have a side of Guisers in to give you a good, hard, Mummering this year? None of you? Really? What are Old Father Christmas, Slasher and Beelzebub going to do if they're not dancing through your housing estate espousing morality tales and killing mechanical worms with big sticks?
This country's going to the dogs, Ah tells thee...
What about Frumenty? You've made a big bowl of Frumenty for Christmas Eve surely? - Did you know that You don't have to eat your Frumenty plain anymore? you can add some really great stuff to it to give it a bit of 'pep' - Nuts and honey for instance, even currants or big chunks of porpoise (for Frumenty, and other religious purposes, they're considered fish, so you can eat them on a Friday, if Christmas day is on a Saturday - Don't all thank me at once.)
Have you bought new decorations to 'jazz up' the graves of your ancestors? Really getting into the Christmas spirit (graves? spirit? geddit?) Share the season of goodwill with your dearly departed by spending an hour or so tinseling up their headstone or planting a yew or oak tree on their gravesite so that it'll both provide you with a place to hang your festive apples (which have now evolved in baubles of course), and drink of their decomposing remains... It's what the Cir-hercle of Life is all about. You could even do a bit of topiary and fashion the tree into a likeness of the person that it's vampirically feeding off - Although that might be a bit ghoulish, even for me.
You've ordered your goose though right? No, not Turkey, nor Turduken because they are from the Western Colonies, and therefore cannot be traditional by definition, because we only stole the land from its indigenous peoples in the early 17th Century... And in my book, anything that's been happening in a foreign country for less than 500 years can't be called a tradition in England, sorry. Come back in fifty years, and I'll have a rethink... Possibly.
Although, you could eat Humble Pie too if you've forgotten the Goose, I know my Yuletide's not complete without a deer's brains, heart, kidney and lungs in a savoury piecrust, swimming in ale gravy and savoured with gusto (which is a bit like piccalilli I think, but I'm not completely sure)
You have made sure that all of the presents that you've bought for your family will fit comfortably in one of their own knee-socks? Presents under the Christmas Tree (and for that matter, Christmas trees themselves) have only been around for a couple of hundred years - they were introduced by Zee Chermans, who, on a slightly more serious note, bombed our chippy and are therefore to be reviled, although not as much as the French, obviously.
There's a bit of irony there too if you think about it... If you have bought a new XBox One for your child and it fits easily into their stocking... They should probably be out in the fresh air getting more exercise - Get them a hockey stick instead, they're perfectly designed to fit in stockings. and a slew of satsumas, and an exercise DVD.
-oOo-
But how will the Dandies be celebrating?
Well, the children will rise at approximately 3:00 am and cook a Full English Breakfast for their parents. As well as the traditional breakfast fare, there will be hand-cooked minced pies, with real meat, in oblong cases (because the Baby Iesu didn't sleep in no round crib). We will rise at 8:00 am and complain that the breakfast has gone cold, this will set the mood for the whole day.
Then we all retire to our separate rooms and delve through our stockings (there is a ten minute pause for the disappointed crying to die down) and my Father, The Grand-Dandy will arrive to preside over the Christmas Luncheon. He will say that it is very nice, but there is too much of it, and it is different from the lunch he had on Christmas Day 1942, which will both confuse and depress him.
Children will play with their handmade wooden toys, whilst looking longingly at the tablet, mobile phone and games console adverts on the 14" black and white television that we normally hire for the occasion.
Once the Grand-Dandy has fallen asleep we will go to the top floor of Dandy Towers with our flatbows and try to get an arrow between the front spokes of any child riding their new bicycles up and down the road to show off, thus teaching them a valuable life-lesson. There will be a prize for the highest score, providing that there are any minced pies left that is.
A two hour silence will be observed whilst I repair, alone, to the Library to watch the Doctor Who Christmas Special, naked, on my 100" HD ceiling mounted, flatscreen.
The day will end with a rousing rendition of our favourite macaronic carols and the children will fight, hand to hand, for the honour of being soundly flogged before bedtime.
Ah tradition, the lifeblood of our fair country... Without it, we are nothing.
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