Cheerio, and all that rot! I think I prefer the American tradition of snow and presents! Barbara Bower -----Original Message----- From: Jak Daniels [mailto:Jak@daniels.flexnet.co.uk] Sent: Tuesday, December 12, 2000 5:37 PM To: BOWER-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [BOWER] Chat: English Traditions Hi Colleen and fellow cousins. I read with interest the different kinds of Christmas traditions within the Sunday Coffee. The one for England made me go - What? We don't do that. I thought that I would share some of the traditions that we do have .... Or is it just my family. Christmas Eve is reserved for going down the pub, this usually involved drinking ye olde traditional Vodka in vast amounts before deciding that perhaps it wasn't a good idea after all and you feel ill. Because the landlord has arranged a lock in after closing time, it is sometimes necessary to hide in the cellar, or under the pool table (given the drunken state you may be in and can't manage the stairs) as the boys in blue knock at the door. This causes a kinda hush to creep over the pub and reminds us that it's Christmas Day. Hurray! Christmas Day consists of moaning because you have a hangover and there are very excited children ripping open the parcels that Father Christmas left (what a shame he forgot to include the batteries - oops) and screaming, and jumping around, and ... oh... my head. Now you have to cook a turkey, which you forgot to get out of the freezer the pervious day and it will take 7 hours to defrost and a further 4 hours to cook. So .... You give up and go down the pub to have a Christmas drink with your mates (the hair of the dog and all that ... ) You arrive and everyone is wearing their new jumpers (from Marks & Spencer's of course) and having a jolly old time. When you arrive back home around 2pm the turkey is still rock solid and you know that its not going to be thawed out until at least Boxing Day even if you do use a blow torch on it, so you give up and give everyone baked beans on toast, which is eaten while watching the Queens speech and then the James Bond film. The in-laws arrive and you end up having an argument about the dinner, because SHE would never forget to defrost it. You play a game of Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, or if all fails get the cards out. But this was a bad move ... the arguments are just waiting to happen. So basically you end up with a hangover, a jumper that you've got to take back to the shop, a turkey that will never cook, your mother-in-law tut-tuting, discussing who is the best James Bond (Sean Connery), having beans on toast and playing board games that anyone in their right mind would normally not go near any other time of the year, and everyone's not talking to each other! This is my usual Christmas .... no wonder I really don't like Christmas. Roll on January 1st. Merry Christmas everyone..... thank heavens its only once a year! Jak Daniels PS: We're having a Goose this year, fresh from the butchers ... I just know that its going to be something wrong with it, I just know. I've got in extra cans of baked beans just in case! :) ==== BOWER Mailing List ==== The Bower Family Homestead, homesite of the Bower mailing list -- http://bowercommunity.com/homestead