Canterbury Cathedral A BRITISH CHRISTMAS Frost whitens fields and roads and woods. The sexton climbs a ladder, and lights the first of Advent’s four candles in the big green wreath suspended from the church rafters. Daylight is dwindling. The nights are growing longer. The Season of Advent, which has the same root as the word adventure, has begun. Advent means the coming. In Christian Britain ancient winter solstice traditions are united with Christmas to celebrate the coming of the Christ child and the opening of human hearts to love. This is difficult to achieve when Christmastide becomes endless rounds of shopping and parties, but there are Christmas traditions that many people hold dear, and many of them were created or made popular by Brits - Christmas Dinner and Christmas Pudding
First pull the Christmas cracker with a bang, and put on a paper crown. Next eat goose, roast beef, or turkey, hot chestnuts, red apples, luscious pears, mince pies, "seething bowls of punch", trifle, and Christmas pudding. Made a month before Christmas, usually on the first Sunday in Advent, of candied fruit, nuts, eggs, flour, and spices, then allowed to mature, Christmas Pudding makes a flamboyant appearance at the end of dinner blazing in brandy, decorated with Christmas holly, and looking "like a speckled cannon ball". Christmas Carols
Image: Haworth, Beautiful Britain Brits wrote the carols Angels We Have Heard on High; God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen; Deck the Halls; O Come, All Ye Faithful; Joy to the World; In the Bleak Midwinter; O Little Town of Bethlehem; and Hark! the Herald Angels Sing, to name a few. Lessons & Carols are held at almost every cathedral in Britain, and carols are sung everywhere, indoors and outdoors. When we're struggling with the stresses of the season, carol singing can ground us in the holy beauty and longing of Christmas.
The tradition of the English cathedral choir has gone abroad. Image: Episcopal Church of the Redeemer Church, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania Panto! 
The turbulent Christmas spirit is alive and well. Image: Richard Wilson is on the right. Richard Wilson Archive One December, we found ourselves at a pantomime with hundreds of giddy children and their parents. On stage, actors in big wigs and hats and gaudy costumes – with the occasional man decked out as a woman and a woman masquerading as a man – delivered saucy send-ups of fairy tales while bounding on and off stage, singing, and imploring the audience to respond. The audience giggled, clapped, shouted warnings, laughed and roared. That's Panto! Christmas cards
Christmas card in the collection of the British Library, A Brit invented the first printed Christmas card in 1843, the same year that Dickens published A Christmas Carol. The first card in the world showed a happy family raising a festive glass, while side scenes showed the family clothing and feeding the poor. The man who commissioned it was Sir Henry Cole, the founder of the Victoria & Albert Museum. The painter was John Calcott Horsely. Printed in black and white and then colored by hand, 1,000 cards were produced for "Old King" Cole. The tradition did not really take off until the Christmas of 1862 when printer Charles Goodall produced a simple card with the words "A Merry Christmas". Messiah! Handel came to Britain to earn a living, became a British subject, and worked feverishly to complete Messiah, which received its first performance on 13 April 1742 in Dublin. The proceeds went to support local hospitals. Messiah is immensely popular in America, and is usually performed during Advent as a pre-Christmas concert. Everyone jumps to their feet during the Hallelujah chorus at the end of Part II. (The 200-year-old tradition supposedly began when George II rose to his feet as the first triumphant notes of the Hallelujah Chorus rang out, and the whole audience stood with him.) During Part III people wept when they heard, floating into the air, pure and heartbreakingly beautiful: "I know that my Redeemer liveth. . ."
Bethany College, West Virginia, has only 900 students, but its choir pours its heart into the Hallelujah Chorus. Father Christmas
Father Christmas in Findlay. Image: Phototails The Christmas Carol
"Bah, humbug!" shouted Scrooge about Christmas. Then he was visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past. . . Novelist Charles Dickens wanted to inspire people to help children "on the lower rungs of life" which is where he had been - hanging on for dear life - when he was a boy. His inspiration for A Christmas Carol came to him like “a bright, clear jet of light” and he wrote at a white heat, finishing the book in less than two months. He sent out presentation copies on December 17, 1843. (The official release date is the 19th.) By December 22nd, he had sold every copy. A Christmas Carol has been a bestseller for the last 150 years, and has been adapted for film, theatre, and television. The story evokes almost every British Christmas tradition, especially the one Dickens considered most important – giving to those in need. In a sweet turn of events, reading the Carol or seeing it performed has become part of the Christmas tradition in English-speaking countries. Taking a walk on Christmas Day
Giving to those in need ColdPlay frontman Chris Martin is apparently "a dab hand with plumbing" and has been "busy with the stopcocks and cisterns of a temporary shelter for alcoholics run by Crisis in London’s Kennington" (Daily Express, 21 December 2007). A Crisis spokesperson who declined to comment says, “We have 7,000 volunteers helping at Christmas." The British people are among the most generous people in the world. They have established thousands of trusts and given hundreds of millions of pounds to teach and feed children, help alcoholics, stop cruelty to animals, preserve the countryside, establish art musuems, and treat disease at home and abroad. Love and charity, forgiveness and trust, making children happy, sharing good times with friends – these are some of the essential lessons that Jesus taught and that Britons have followed for fifteen hundred years. The 12 days of Christmas 
The 12 days of Christmas begin with Christmas Day, Christmas stockings full of treats, the Christmas Service, and The Queen's Speech. Boxing Day follows on December 26, and the next days can be a blur of lunches, games, dancing, ice-skating, hunting, theatre and pantomime, and covert operations spearheaded by children. . . "I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!" The 12 Days of Christmas end on Twelfth Night, the Feast of Epiphany, 6 January, when the Wise Men brought gifts to the Christ Child. It's a good time for seeing the world in a new way. When you contribute to this website,
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The Yule log disperses darkness and invites relaxation, games, and snuggling.
Decorating with Christmas wreaths, holly, and mistletoe and gift-giving are British, and originally pagan, customs. Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert brought the Christmas tree to Britain from Germany in the 19th century. Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, had put a Christmas tree in Windsor in the 18th century, but Albert's tree 'had legs'. Medieval Christmas in England was a jovial, musical, and sometimes rowdy affair. Christmas was abolished in England in the 1640s. It returned with the Restoration in the 1660s.
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