Jonathan Thomas (00:12)
Welcome back to the Anglotopia podcast the podcast for people who love British travel history and culture I'm your host Jonathan Thomas and today we're celebrating the season with a very special Christmas episode exploring the fascinating differences between British and American Christmas traditions My guest again is Amanda Graves Londoner turned Texan

Anglotopia columnist who writes her twice monthly column, Spilling the Tea, and veteran of 40 American Christmases since immigrating to Massachusetts in 1985. Amanda comes from a distinguished British commercial family. Her relatives own Jay Lyons and Company, and Lewis is a Liverpool. And she grew up with quintessentially British Christmases complete with all the traditions Americans find utterly baffling. After raising five children in America, running a catering business and navigating four decades of cultural differences.

She's uniquely positioned to compare and contrast how both sides of the Atlantic celebrate the festive season. So we're going to talk about everything from Christmas dinner disasters and the grapefruit cake divide to why Americans decorate like they're trying to be seen from space and to what happens when British Boxing Day meets American indifference and whether 40 years in America can make you forget to wait until Christmas Day to open presents. Welcome back Amanda and Merry Christmas or should I say Happy Christmas?

Amanda Graves (01:32)
Well, thank you. Well, I am bilingual now. So when I'm here, I say Merry Christmas. And when I'm in England, I say Happy Christmas.

Jonathan Thomas (01:38)
Yeah, I have to say Merry Christmas because you know, you're just going to confuse people. So well, thank you for being on the podcast again.

Amanda Graves (01:45)
pleasure.

Jonathan Thomas (01:46)
So for those who had not checked out her column Spilling to Tea, she's got several installments now up live on the website, which we will link to in the show notes. And she is providing a wonderful perspective on the differences between American and British culture. And it's highly recommend checking it out. We were just going through the comments she's gotten on the posts and they've been very well received so far. ⁓ Amanda, you've now experienced 40 Christmases in America. ⁓

Amanda Graves (02:08)
Thank you.

Jonathan Thomas (02:16)
When you think back to your very first American Christmas, what was the biggest culture shock?

Amanda Graves (02:22)
Well, my very first Christmas in America, we had just moved into a condo complex. And so I really had no idea what to expect. But suddenly everybody had tons of decorations up. Everybody had wreaths on their door. Everybody was putting lights into their bushes outside their door. And I'm thinking, ⁓ I didn't know that we were supposed to do that. And then a lot of people put their Christmas trees up super early, right after Thanksgiving.

Jonathan Thomas (02:46)
Hahaha.

Amanda Graves (02:51)
Again, that was a bit baffling to me because at home we really didn't put up our Christmas tree until the week of Christmas. And I think that's still fairly true. I think some people put their tree up early over in the UK, but most people wait until at least mid-December. So I'm afraid I have succumbed to this. So now the day after Christmas, we put up our tree. I've become very American because I love it. And I think, well, I want to admire it for longer than I would if I were in the UK.

Jonathan Thomas (03:18)
Yeah, we're still digesting turkey when we go get our Christmas tree. We usually.

Amanda Graves (03:22)
Well, we have a bit of an advantage because

we've got our three older grandsons staying with us right before Thanksgiving. And so in fact, the day before Thanksgiving, they're going to put our tree up for us. They don't know that yet, but they did it for us last year. And it's a cheating way to get that done.

Jonathan Thomas (03:34)
You

So

you do you do you have a fake tree or do you do a real tree?

Amanda Graves (03:42)
⁓

We used to do a real tree a lot. ⁓ I have to admit now we have a fake tree because we often travel and I don't want to be leaving a dead tree up. And also since we have one, why not use it? And it's a really, it's an elegant one. It's not what I would call a tacky one. It looks real. ⁓ So that is what I pivoted to. But if you'd asked me 40 years ago if I would ever do that, I would have said absolutely not.

Jonathan Thomas (04:10)
Yeah, we're still on team real tree. We go to a local Christmas tree farm and cut them down, which seems terrible to just kill something, to put it in your living room for a month. what we started doing is we'll buy a baby Christmas tree so that we plant something after the holiday to kind of make up for cutting a Christmas tree down.

Amanda Graves (04:12)
you

Well, that's nice. Well, when I

first met my husband, he was not in the Christmas spirit particularly, and he had a large cactus and he would put some really funny ornaments on the cactus. And so that is how he celebrated Christmas while he was single. And he has some funny ornaments like the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, which hangs from that. And so we still, we don't have the cactus anymore, but we have a small Christmas tree, a fake one that we put up on the

Jonathan Thomas (04:51)
You

Amanda Graves (05:02)
on the mantelpiece, on the fireplace, and we hang the tacky ornaments on that as a nod to his previous indifference of Christmas.

Jonathan Thomas (05:12)
So growing up in a distinguished British family with all that history and heritage, what were the Christmas traditions like in your childhood home? Paint us a picture of a typical Christmas day when you were young.

Amanda Graves (05:24)
I don't think it's so different from anybody. mean, the typical thing was, first thing was stockings. And my sister and I shared a bedroom. And so the stockings would be put at the foot of our bed. And then we would open our stockings together before we came downstairs. And traditionally, there was always an orange in the toe of the stocking. So you knew that. And there were certain things that were in there every year that was part of the tradition. And if they weren't there, you would notice. ⁓

So after the stockings, we'd come down and we'd have breakfast. One memorable Christmas, we decided to make my mother breakfast in bed. And we had no way of knowing that very late the night before she'd gone out to midnight mass. And she'd come in very quietly, trying not to wake anybody, and had come up the stairs and realized that she had trod dog poo all the way up the stairs and had to spend two hours scrubbing the stairs, had fallen into bed at about...

three o'clock in the morning and we woke her at six o'clock with breakfast in bed and she had to try to be happy about it. ⁓ So we don't do breakfast in bed, we would come downstairs and have something and then we would get dressed and we'd open our presents and it was always Christmas lunch, it was never Christmas dinner and so often we would have one set of grandparents over or very occasionally we would go up to one set of grandparents but usually they would come to us and then after lunch

Jonathan Thomas (06:23)
no.

Amanda Graves (06:48)
At three o'clock, it was what was the Queen's speech, it's now the King's speech, and that is an absolute must-see. Everybody pretty much gathers around the TV and watches now the King. And then we would spend hours before Christmas poring over the radio times and the TV times to see what was on on Christmas Day, because they always had Christmas specials, sometimes films and...

of course you had to watch in my family, Morecambe and Why is Christmas Special? They were the comedy duo that my father absolutely loved them and we all loved them too. And their Christmas specials were really not to be missed. And then in the evening it was just eating leftovers and just being, you know, calm and quiet and lazy and enjoying our presents. And that was basically it. That was our Christmas day.

Jonathan Thomas (07:37)
Sounds lovely. So, ⁓ yeah, food and telly. mean, it's universal. You mentioned in our last conversation that you've raised five children across two marriages in America. How did you navigate passing down British Christmas traditions to your American board children or growing up in a completely different culture?

Amanda Graves (07:38)
Not too different from here, I don't think.

Food and telly, absolutely. ⁓

⁓

I wouldn't say it's completely different. ⁓ I always did stockings for them and I still do stockings for them even though they're all grown up now for all of my children. ⁓ And one of the big differences is that in America, Santa Claus, who of course in the UK is Father Christmas,

Santa brings all the presents, whereas in the UK, Santa only brings the stockings. And I approve of that because I really don't think that Santa should get all the credit for the things that the parents have been doing. And I had a friend that I knew back in Massachusetts, and her children came to her one year, and they were maybe six and seven. And one of them said, Mom, I figured it out. I know that Santa really exists. And her mother said, how do you know that? And she said,

because you'd never give us all this stuff. So I really think that parents should get the credit and not Santa. ⁓ I have tried to keep up with the tradition of eating turkey, but you have to remember that in the US, they'll have only had Thanksgiving less than a month previously. So not everybody wants to do turkey again. And so I tend to find that my daughters will pivot more towards ham, which I'm not a huge fan of.

or beef, so I'm always trying to push my agenda, but I'm not pushing it too hard because it's their traditions and I don't want to tell them what to do.

Jonathan Thomas (09:28)
Well, that's a good segue into the next question is, let's talk about Christmas dinner. So America can famously not decide which dish it wants to serve for Christmas lunch and Christmas dinner. Like you said, we've already had Turkey, so we don't really want Turkey again, but that's the standard British Christmas dinner meal. So what have you ended up preferring?

Amanda Graves (09:50)
⁓ Well, I still do like the turkey and the way that my parents used to do it is they would go to a turkey farm before Christmas, several weeks before Christmas, and then they would pick out their turkey from the turkey farm. ⁓ And you have to remember that English fridges are much smaller than US fridges, and so you're not going to get the giant bird necessarily that you do over here. So what they would do is they would do turkey and there would be two stuffings inside the turkey. One would be the sausage meat.

which was in the neck of the turkey. And then in the cavity of the turkey, my mother would make a bread stuffing, which was white bread, lemon, parsley. ⁓ I think that's basically it, salt and pepper. And so she would make that into a sort of a breadcrumb mixture and she would put that in the cavity. And then she would make her own gravy by using the giblets that came with the bird. And again, you knew you were going to be getting the giblets because you weren't getting it from a sanitized supermarket, you were getting it from a farm.

And then we had to have roast potatoes and Brussels sprouts. And back in the day when I was a child, for some reason, my mother thought that we'd all like chestnuts with that. And I have to tell you, we all wouldn't like chestnuts with that. We all thought they were disgusting. And I must say that also Brussels sprouts have changed over the decades. It used to be that Brussels sprouts tasted much stronger, much more bitter, but they're grown differently now, I gather. And that's why they're much more popular than they used to be. Plus we used to boil them. And now we really don't do that. We tend to roast them.

Jonathan Thomas (11:06)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Amanda Graves (11:17)
it tastes a whole lot better. Cranberry sauce. So you had to have the cranberry sauce with the whole cranberries in it. And when I moved to Massachusetts, which was where I first moved to, I had had no idea that ocean spray cranberries came from Massachusetts. And we'd always had ocean spray back in the UK. And they came in little jars. Well, when I moved to Massachusetts, they come in cans. I had never seen this before. So you have the jellied cranberry sauce, or as I like to call it, Canberry.

And then you've got the whole cranberry sauce in the tin as well, or the can, which you open both ends and you push it out and it's like a log. And I was just horrified by this because I was thinking, well, surely I can make my own. So I did try making my own a couple of times and honestly, it tasted pretty much exactly the same. So I don't do that anymore. Then after our turkey and Brussels sprouts and roast potatoes, we would always have Christmas pudding.

And so, you know the Christmas Carol bring us some figgy pudding? Well, it's very misleading because there are actually no figs in a Christmas pudding. And it's not even a plum pudding. It's more like a fruitcake. It's very dense. It's made with raisins ⁓ and it's sort of a dome shape and it's made with suet and it's steamed and you can steam it for hours and hours and hours to get it ready, which is what they used to do. Now, of course, you can buy some really good ones and all you do is stick them in the microwave. But of course, the pièce de résistance is when you set

the brandy on fire and you pour it over the Christmas pudding and the flames leap up blue and that's all quite impressive. And then you serve it with what Americans call hard sauce, but we call brandy butter, which is brandy and unsalted butter, which is creamed with very fine sugar, castor sugar we call it. And then you add the brandy drop by drop and it keeps for a long time and you put a little scoop of that on it. And also traditionally the Christmas pudding will have money in it.

And so what you do is you boil the coins so that you don't poison everybody. And obviously you don't want people to eat the money. You need to let them know that there may be money in there. Back when I was a child, I'm old enough that there used to be a sixpence. And I'm not sure what they put in there now. ⁓ I really don't know because I haven't done it in such a long time. But that was the tradition. Then everybody got a slice and you saw if you had any money in it or not. And so that was the dinner. then...

I know people ask about mince pies. We didn't ever have that with a meal. We would have that in the afternoon when you would normally have a cup of tea. We would have a mince pie with a cup of tea. And also that goes very well with the brandy butter.

Jonathan Thomas (13:46)
So that sounds like a great British Christmas dinner. And you mentioned the size of turkeys. And that reminds me of when we did a Christmas in England in 2013 and we ordered a turkey from the local butcher and he delivered it and we opened it. like, I think this is a turkey. This looks like a chicken. And we ordered the biggest turkey they had.

Amanda Graves (14:05)
That's...

Well, it is quite funny. I mean, when I first moved here and people were getting £26 turkeys and I'm going, how, you know, how is this even possible?

Jonathan Thomas (14:16)
Yeah, we ordered our turkey this year for Thanksgiving. We ordered a 30 pound turkey. And even my wife is like, how are we going to fit this in the oven? I don't know. We're just going to fit it in there.

Amanda Graves (14:26)
That's crazy.

Jonathan Thomas (14:29)
So, okay, so that's your typical British Christmas dinner when you were growing up. like, a picture for what do you do now for your family, now that you've been in America for so long, and do you have any of your favorite dishes as growing up?

Amanda Graves (14:44)
If I'm hosting it, I will do the traditional Christmas dinner. If I'm at one of the children, I go along with whatever they want to do and I will bring something like a miniature Christmas pudding or a few mince pies because honestly, people don't really like them here and I don't even particularly like the Christmas pudding so I'm not gonna force it on anybody. But I do like to try to keep a little bit of that tradition if I can, but I also have to be respectful for their traditions.

Jonathan Thomas (15:00)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I noticed, ⁓ Target is in a partnership with Marks and Spencer, a multi-year partnership. And so the last couple of years, they've had Marks and Spencer's Christmas themed products in the, in the local Target. And I was there yesterday getting some biscuits and tea and they didn't have Vince pies. They, they, they, was, yeah, but they probably don't sell that many. They're an acquired taste.

Amanda Graves (15:32)
well, they do have them at World Market. If you have a World Market. Well, they've got an entire shelf

of them, all kinds of different brands I've never even heard of and different types of mince pies I've never even seen. But thank you for reminding me about Target because I do need to get over there for my stocking stuffers because I do like to put British chocolates and things into the stockings for the children.

Jonathan Thomas (15:55)
Well, they had lots of chocolate and candies. yeah. So you ran a catering business ⁓ for a long time. Did you ever introduce British Christmas foods to your American customers or did you avoid it altogether?

Amanda Graves (16:08)
⁓ that is a hard no. ⁓ If I ever mention something like mince pies, first of all, people wouldn't know what I was talking about and they would think that they were made with meat. Like they would think mince meat was meat, which back in the olden days, I guess it was, you know, had suet and things in it. But no, I mean, having lived there long enough, I realized that it's just not a thing there and people really don't like it. So most of the Christmas parties I did anyway were orderly.

Jonathan Thomas (16:11)
Hahaha

Amanda Graves (16:38)
you know, you would pass the hors d'oeuvres around. So it didn't really come up. Very occasionally, I will do miniature mince pies just so people can try them with the brandy butter, but no, not really a thing.

Jonathan Thomas (16:49)
So, Christmas crackers. Do Americans understand them? Have you managed to convert any Americans to the joys of the terrible jokes and paper crowns or do they just look at you like,

Amanda Graves (16:56)
You

For anyone who doesn't know what we mean by Christmas cracker, it does not mean a cracker that you eat cheese with. It means it's like a cylinder. In fact, I have some out there. they have little explosive charge inside them. I know that sounds dangerous. And you pull them apart and it makes a bang. And out will fall a paper crown, a very bad joke, a rubbish plastic toy. ⁓

you never know what you're going to get. But it's imperative that once you have pulled that cracker, you have to put the hat on. You have to put the paper hat on. So we do that. I actually think it's a lot of fun. And places like World Market, they carry them year round. I you can get Thanksgiving crackers now. You can get Easter crackers. You can get all these things. ⁓ I've noticed they're a lot more available here than they used to be. used to be really hard to find them. But I found some the other day at Sula Tabla. They were on sale for 20 bucks instead of 35 bucks. So it's a

Jonathan Thomas (17:47)
Yeah, they are.

Amanda Graves (17:54)
you know, I drove out there to get them because it's worth it. ⁓ I did get very upset when I was looking on Amazon to see what I could order that about 60 % of the ones on offer there have taken out the bang. They are now snap free and I don't get that. mean, part of the fun is the bang when you pull the cracker.

Jonathan Thomas (18:09)
Yeah.

Well, that's the thing is in many, many US States, they're considered a firework. And a lot of US States ban fireworks. Indiana does not ban fireworks. So I'm happy that I can get crackers here in Illinois, harder to find, that's the other controlled substance, which is amusing because I went to a Guy Fawkes celebration a few weeks ago in Chicago with the local British American Business Council.

Amanda Graves (18:36)
Well...

Jonathan Thomas (18:46)
and they wanted to have sparklers because they couldn't do fireworks. But then they realized they couldn't buy sparklers anywhere in Illinois. So I had to smuggle them in from Indiana.

Amanda Graves (18:56)
⁓

We

have the law here in San Antonio is if you live within the city limits, fireworks are illegal. But if you're in the county, and we're about this far into the county, there are fireworks stands that are open for very short times right before New Year and right before the 4th of July. But everyone ignores it. Everybody sets off the fireworks.

Jonathan Thomas (19:08)
Alright.

Yeah, yeah, it's nanny state, right? ⁓ So let's talk about fruitcake. ⁓ for those who don't know, I'm going to link in the show notes to Amanda's article about fruitcake. We have a misconception of what fruitcake is. And so can you fill us in, Amanda?

Amanda Graves (19:38)
Yes, so I think the reason a lot of Americans don't like fruitcake is it's not the type of fruitcake that is made in Britain. And if you read my article, you'll see how they are very different from each other. And I was just recently at a British club meeting in San Antonio, and I actually have gone to World Market and I have bought a Dundee cake, which is a British fruitcake, and I cut it up for people to try who had never tried UK fruitcake. And they all, all the Americans who had never had it before,

really liked it. It's made completely differently. It's not nearly as sweet. It's not nearly as solid, ⁓ although it can be. ⁓ It has booze in it, which American fruitcakes, I don't think, always do. ⁓ And it's not nearly as sweet. I don't know if I already said that. So it is completely different. So if you are an American and you've never tried a British fruitcake, I suggest that you do try it because you might be pleasantly surprised. But for the Brits...

That's a bit too sweet for our tastes.

Jonathan Thomas (20:38)
⁓ So traditionally the British wait until Christmas Day to open presents, while Americans often will open presents on Christmas Eve and then open ⁓ Christmas presents Christmas morning. With your American family, how have you handled this? you imposed British discipline or do your American children want to just open as soon as they can?

Amanda Graves (20:56)
No,

in fact, because my first husband was also British when we had our children, we really didn't know about the opening presents on Christmas evening. We always just did it on Christmas day. But now I do ⁓ what my mother also does, which is a present from the tree. So what you do is you'll put little presents on the tree that can be opened on Christmas evening. That would just be something very small. And so that way you've got something that you've opened ahead of time.

⁓ As with the present opening, we were very organized when I was growing up. My mother had a notepad and every present that we opened she would write down who it was from so we could write our thank you letters right after Christmas. I find that here, this doesn't fly, the grandchildren all rip open everybody's presents, even if they aren't their own, ⁓ all at the same time. And so everybody's going around the room and they're just tearing everything open and I've, that's a.

I can't handle that. I like having it a little bit more disciplined. But again, I've had to learn to just to let go with it and realize this is their tradition. This is not my tradition. But if it was me and when it was my children, that was what we would do. We'd be very organized and everybody taking it in turns, which I also like because then you get to look at what everybody else has received and you get to see the reaction. If you've given them something, you want to see their reaction.

Jonathan Thomas (22:18)
So you spent ⁓ the first half of your expat life in Massachusetts and now most recently live in Texas. What are some cultural differences between Massachusetts and Texas and was that as stark as the difference between Britain and America?

Amanda Graves (22:34)
The only real difference, well first of all, the weather. You can do a lot more here outdoors in Texas, which is kind of strange, know, on Christmas day you expect it to be chilly. ⁓ The other thing is absolutely the decorations. It's definitely everything bigger in Texas. ⁓ I would say our neighborhood really kind of goes all in. I think I mentioned in one of my articles about...

about Halloween, I talked about Christmas decorations and Halloween decorations and that sort of thing. And it really is a huge deal. People have competitions in their neighborhoods to see who has the most impressive displays, who has the tackiest displays, that sort of thing. And there really are houses here that are lit up incredibly. I mean, we did have a few in Massachusetts and we used to drive around those neighborhoods, but they were, I hate to say more tastefully done, but they were less colorful.

They were a lot more about white lights, whereas here, everything is in full color. So it's definitely, it's louder here, I would say.

Jonathan Thomas (23:36)
Yeah, if I had two memories from the part of my childhood I spent in Texas, would be one would be that it was always raining on Christmas. And two would be that it would be driving around to the neighborhoods to see the over the top Christmas lights. It was always that was the highlight, the highlight of the year.

Amanda Graves (23:52)
It's still the thing. Next door to us,

we have an elf upside down in a bush, waving its legs. We've got Christmas music playing from the front lawn. We've got an inflatable helicopter with Santa in it. ⁓ We generally didn't get a whole lot of that in Certainly not in the UK.

Jonathan Thomas (24:10)
I don't imagine you would.

It's a very, very, what's the word I'm looking for? A very respectful Protestant Christmas tradition, right? You know, from the old Puritan days.

Amanda Graves (24:25)
Yes,

Massachusetts was very much like that, yes.

Jonathan Thomas (24:28)
Yes, doing it properly with reverence. So we don't do that in Indiana. Let's see. So Boxing Day is a big part of the British holiday season, but it means absolutely nothing to Americans. So how do you explain Boxing Day to Americans? And do you do Boxing Day lunch in Texas?

Amanda Graves (24:34)
Okay.

Boxing day is really just for us, it's also just the day after Christmas where everybody has a sort of recuperation day from eating too much. If you look up the meaning of Boxing Day, you'll get several different versions of it. Overall, the theme is that things were boxed up to give to the poor. And back then it could be the church boxes, the collection boxes that would be boxed up and taken to what we call the alms houses, ALMS, and there's some alms houses.

Jonathan Thomas (25:00)
Yeah.

Amanda Graves (25:16)
where I grew up in North London and they were built in the 1600s and there were these tiny little houses and that was where the poorest people lived and so it would be arms for the poor, they would be given. Also it could be boxing up leftovers, boxing up food, no one's 100 % sure, but either way to donate to the less fortunate. So honestly, I've never really celebrated it, I would just say it's another day off over Christmas.

Jonathan Thomas (25:45)
The Queen's Christmas speech and now the King's Christmas speech are appointment viewing in Britain. Do you still watch it in Texas or have you watched it regularly during your expat years and do you explain its importance to Americans who are like, why are you stopping to listen to the Queen or the King?

Amanda Graves (25:57)
Ahem.

Always, ⁓ that's always been a big part of it. And it's only 10 minutes. So what I do now is if I'm not able, I don't know if I can see it live here, I might, maybe on the BBC, but that's nine o'clock in the morning. I'm usually busy doing other things. So I'll watch it on YouTube. And I like the fact that this particular speech when the monarch is the head of the Church of England, they talk about their faith and they talk about the true meaning of Christmas. And it's a little oasis of calm.

in a day full of excitement and presence. The King is bringing the country into a more, what I would call, ecumenical environment. He's always been more ecumenical in his approach. And the speech also highlights some of the things that the royal family does for charities. So they'll highlight some of the charities that they've visited and they've raised awareness of some of these nonprofits.

which a lot of people don't know about. And then when they will have a choir or a band playing the national anthem, they will pick maybe kids from an underserved city or veterans or people like that that they want to have a part of their message. And I think it's very meaningful and I always watch it.

Jonathan Thomas (27:18)
Yeah, that's one thing I've really come to appreciate, like you said, it's on a 9 a.m. for us. it's not... The British have already had the whole Christmas day by the time it airs in the UK. For me, it's the beginning of the day. And it's a nice bookend to after the orgy of presents and opening that we stop, we listen to the nice thing that the king has to say. And it's usually very calm. it's like, it's always a nice message because it's so well scripted. mean, that's not...

beat around the bush here. It's a scripted speech that the king had no part in writing. yeah, weeks in advance. mean, yeah. But it's always a nice little treat to kind of bookend the Christmas celebrations.

Amanda Graves (27:47)
Yeah. And I'm sure it's taped. don't know how far in advance, ⁓ but yeah, probably.

Yes, yeah, it's one of my favorite parts

of Christmas.

Jonathan Thomas (28:04)
So, and speaking of telly, Christmas television is a big part of the British Christmas tradition with Doctor Who specials and EastEnders drama and more common wise repeats. What do you miss most about Christmas telly and have you sought out British Christmas telly for your own enjoyment?

Amanda Graves (28:22)
I think not so much the television show as being with my family and watching something that we've all agreed on, that we all wanted to watch, that feeling of camaraderie and love and family. That's really the sentiment. Things are very different here. I mean, obviously, like you said, we have the specials, Morkman-Wise Christmas special. You never wanted to miss that because they always had incredible...

guest stars and I can send you a link to some of the people that they have had on the show. I mean, they've had prime ministers, they've had, you know, very, very famous people. Here you have your traditional Christmas movies. You've got Charlie Brown Christmas. Everybody likes to watch that. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. All these things that I really had never seen before I came over. One of the films I've never even heard of, which is a huge deal here, is It's a Wonderful Life.

And that is always shown on Christmas Day, but it's also shown 24 hours a day for the Christmas season on one of the channels. I don't remember which one. But when that first came out, it was right after the war and people didn't like it at all. It was too depressing. They thought it was a melancholy movie and they didn't like it, even though it had this redemptive ending. But of course, over the years, over the decades, it's become a Christmas favorite. So that's become one of my new traditions. I always like to watch that. ⁓

Jonathan Thomas (29:16)
Yep.

No.

communist.

Amanda Graves (29:46)
I don't have Brit Box, I know a lot of people, a lot of expats do, and I've been thinking about it, but I think if I had that perhaps, perhaps I would be more in tune with the Christmas specials from the UK, but I'm out of the loop these days.

Jonathan Thomas (30:01)
So ⁓ pantomime season is a massive part of British Christmas culture. How do you explain panto to Americans?

Amanda Graves (30:09)
So in a nutshell, it is an irreverent take on a fairy tale. So the most popular ones would be Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Aladdin, and Puss in Boots. Those are the four pantomimes that are the most performed. And the way it works is they take the traditional story, but they flip it. So the principal boy, and in Cinderella that would be Prince Charming, is always played by a girl. Cinderella is also played by a girl, usually some washed up.

D movie star actress who's performing on the London stage. The fairy godmother is always played by a man in full getup. in Aladdin, ⁓ I believe it's the genie that is the, no, it's the Aladdin's mother is always played by a man. And they call those men who perform this particular game, they call them pantomime dames. And there are very famous pantomime dames that people.

go to see. Back when I was a child, it was Danny LaRue. Right now, it's somebody called Julian Clary. And he is on stage in I don't know what the pantomime is this year, maybe Jack and the Beanstalk. ⁓ In Cinderella, the ugly sisters are also played by men in the full get up. There are jokes which go right over the children's heads, but they're designed for the adults to have a good laugh because they're lampooning politics and current events. And so they're making it topical. They're taking

Topical songs, they're putting their own words to them to make everybody laugh. At some point, candy is thrown into the audience. If it's Cinderella, the character Buttons, who doesn't feature in the original Cinderella story, but Buttons is sort of Cinderella's right-hand man, ⁓ Buttons comes and introduces everything and he throws the candy into the audience. And then when the baddie comes on, the bad guy, whichever pantomime it is, everybody has to hiss. ⁓

Not booing, but you have this. And then our hero will come to the front and all the children will start screaming, you know, he's behind you, he's behind you. And then he'll go, ⁓ no, he isn't. And then the whole audience will shout, ⁓ yes, he is. And that goes on back and forth. That's very traditional. ⁓ We had gone to see Cinderella when our children were very small. And buttons had come out and said, I gather there's somebody with a birthday here today. And it was one of our daughters.

And he said, and where did you come from? And she said, America. And he goes, oh, you haven't got a clue what's going on there, have you? This is very, very British. We always wondered why it didn't really catch on here. It really hasn't. I've only been to one pantomime over here, and that was in Rhode Island, and it had been written and produced by a British guy. So it's just not something that is a thing here. And if you say pantomime to people here, they think you're talking about mimes, and it's nothing to do with that.

Yes, exactly. No, no, it's very loud and very, very silly.

Jonathan Thomas (33:03)
I regret that I have not seen a pantomime yet. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

Amanda Graves (33:06)
Well, living in Indiana, unless you're probably not going to either.

for sure.

I don't know if it happens in Britain. I do have some British friends here who do have followed that tradition and send out newsletters. I never got into that. I would maybe occasionally do that when my children were very little, but most of the time I would write some kind of spoof newsletter to make everybody laugh or a silly poem or something like that because I really think some of them have gone over the top. And I'll read them if they're short and sweet, but if they go on for two pages, I'm not gonna read it. I'm very sorry.

I have one friend, Shelby Nameless, who sends out a PDF of their Christmas card newsletter and it goes for four pages. And you know, I love her, I love the family, but I'm not gonna read four pages of what your family did last year, I'm sorry. ⁓ So it's great if you want to do that, but my advice would be to keep it to one page, you're more likely to be read if you do that.

Jonathan Thomas (34:15)
Yeah, we get Christmas cards from our British friends and they're usually traditional. They're usually a charity card where the money has gone to charity and it contains a nice message and contrasts that to our American friends where it's like, here's everything we did in the last year. Here's, you know, pictures of us with the new dog and yeah, happy, happy.

Amanda Graves (34:31)
I mean, it's great. It's great if you want to share it, but just be aware that most people probably

aren't going to read the whole thing.

Jonathan Thomas (34:40)
Happy for you all. This could have gone on Facebook. After 40 years, what aspect of British Christmas do you still desperately miss every year?

Amanda Graves (34:41)
Yes.

Oh, gosh. A few things. Like I mentioned before, the weather, I find it very odd that it'll be in the 70s when it's Christmas Day, when, you know, you've got to roast a turkey and you've got to have your house is going to be hot. It's going to be hot anyway. I miss the carols singing. In our neighborhood, you would go door to door and you'd sing carols and you'd collect for charity. I miss the carol concerts. It's very traditional to go to a carol concert or

Midnight Mass. When we were children, we would always go to the carol concert at the Albert Hall that was performed by the Bach Choir because my grandfather was the president of the Royal Albert Hall. So we used to get special privileges and we'd be in the president's box, which was next to the royal box. And we were always told very sternly, you're not to stare, you're not to stare at the royals and you're certainly not to take your opera glasses and stare at the royals through the opera glasses. But we would get to have lunch in the Albert Hall.

Jonathan Thomas (35:36)
Thanks

Amanda Graves (35:48)
beforehand and then we would get to meet the conductor David Wilcox who was the conductor of the Bach choir ⁓ and we got to listen to ⁓ John Rutter when he was a composer when he was first starting out and now he's you extremely well known and it was just a really beautiful tradition that we did that so the carols. A couple of the carols have different tunes here which threw me off

and I still can't quite get past that. Away in a Manger has a completely different tune here and Old Little Town of Bethlehem. And so I've got past that now, but initially I was thinking that's very strange. And the other thing that is different is that in England, it doesn't matter what day of the week Christmas is on. If you're going to go to church, you go to church on Christmas day. Whereas here, and as you're Catholic, you don't go to church unless it's on a Sunday.

Jonathan Thomas (36:40)
Now we go to, my wife is Catholic, so we go to Christmas Mass ⁓ on Christmas Eve. ⁓ I got convinced to go ⁓ last year. Persuaded, I guess is the word, for the first time. She begged me every year for the 20 some years we've been together to go to Catholic Christmas Mass. I finally relented and went last year.

and I'm not welcome there.

Amanda Graves (37:09)
Yeah. And did

they sing carols? Because that's sort of the best part of it. You're singing the Christmas carols.

Jonathan Thomas (37:16)
Yeah, I, it was a traditional Christmas service. So there were carols and which was nice because I, you know, growing up in a Protestant tradition and I'm not religious now. So I don't want to know people to think I'm religious or anything. But I don't like bands and churches and then the way modern worship is conducted. I'm more of traditionalist. I'm a yeah.

Amanda Graves (37:36)
I'm the same as you. They're the praise band. I can't get behind it.

Jonathan Thomas (37:40)
Yeah, I'm a

if I'm a I'm an old school C of E Anglican in that way. I want I want ⁓ hymns and carols and singing and ⁓ smells and bells as they say.

Amanda Graves (37:45)
Hmm.

Smells of balls. Well, when I was at

boarding school, ⁓ we had our traditional Christmas service every year where the parents could come and we had exactly the same service every single year. And I really liked that tradition. You had the same readings, the same carols, and that was a tradition and I loved that. So I miss, I suppose I miss that. I have actually got tickets this year to go to Handel's Messiah here in town with a couple of British friends.

and I'm looking forward to that. It's not one of the sing-alongs, but that's okay. ⁓ I think that will be a special thing to do.

Jonathan Thomas (38:27)
That'll be nice. So conversely, what are some American Christmas traditions that you've just loved now and never want to give up?

Amanda Graves (38:35)
I'm blanking on that one. ⁓ I think I like the fact that they do evening meals rather than necessarily Christmas lunch because then you have more time to open your presents and maybe watch TV and that sort of thing. And of course, the parents will have been up since really, really early, but it doesn't make things so rush. So a lot of the time with our family, we'll have a meal at about three or four o'clock.

And on a normal day, that would be kind of weird, but on Christmas, it works. ⁓ So that I like. But really other than that, I don't know. I mean, I still think that the stockings, I'm very down on the fact that Santa Claus brings everything and not just the stockings. No, no, no, I can't really think of anything that I'm loving that's particularly different.

Jonathan Thomas (39:29)
I meant to ask earlier, do you put the orange in your children's stockings?

Amanda Graves (39:33)
I do not because ⁓ I've got kids that live in different places now and I have to mail them. Now I do a Terry's Chocolate Orange. And so in fact, I just bought mine, just went to World Market and got some of my stocking stuffers and they're doing all these different flavors. It used to be just a very plain Terry's Chocolate Orange. And I think this year I got Salted Caramel or something like that. I mean, I'm willing to move with the times. I'm not completely rule bound.

Jonathan Thomas (39:40)
Ha

I need to go to world market now and then this is not this episode is not sponsored by world market. I mean come on Yeah

Amanda Graves (40:01)
you do. No, no, it's not. But I mean, it's where I get a lot of my stocking stuff is because I want

to have that sort of British ⁓ bias to some of the things that go in there.

Jonathan Thomas (40:12)
Yeah, when we were in LA for a year for my wife's work a few years ago, there was a world market nearby. That was nice. Lots of British things there.

Amanda Graves (40:20)
So it is

very nice.

Jonathan Thomas (40:23)
So, ⁓ have you been, do you go, when you go back to the UK quite often, so do you make a point to go during Christmas time or do you avoid it?

Amanda Graves (40:33)
I know

usually don't, but we are this year. We're actually going on Christmas Day. ⁓ I haven't spent that many Christmases over there, but a few years ago, gosh, it must be now about 15 years ago, I knew I wasn't going to be back for Christmas. So I enlisted my niece to help me surprise everybody with Christmas in July.

and we cordoned off the dining room, we put a sign on the door saying, nobody can come in. And I had ordered a turkey from the butcher and it was so big. He said to me, I don't know where I'm gonna find a turkey. I said, well, do your best. And he found this massive turkey and it literally wouldn't fit in the fridge. So I had to find a cooler, pack it full of ice and put the turkey in the cooler and hide it. And then we went upstairs and we got all the Christmas decorations down and we decorated the table. My niece, who was about eight at the time, made Christmas cards for everybody.

because I was sad that I was going to be missing it. ⁓ But it's hard, you know, it's really hard when you've got children in school and you haven't got that much vacation time and you have a whole other family here, you can't always go back. So I do miss the fact that I'm not there, but I try to make the best of it.

Jonathan Thomas (41:45)
Well, that's something we didn't really, we talk about is that for Americans, I mean, we get usually get Christmas day off half of Christmas Eve, if you're lucky. And maybe, the 26, but most people actually have to go back to work the 26th. it's, if it's a weekday. Yeah.

Amanda Graves (42:01)
That is true, whereas in the UK, pretty much

everybody has that whole week off. It's just expected. And so that's another thing. ⁓ It's more difficult to do that, to get away, unless the children are really small. And then you've got a bit more flexibility.

Jonathan Thomas (42:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, I know we do a lot of business with the UK obviously and basically from like mid December to the first week after New Year's nothing's no emails getting answered. You're not nothing. Nothing important that has happening. ⁓ So it's it's it's it's a circle back around after the New Year happens earlier every year. So it's.

Amanda Graves (42:29)
Yeah, I can see that.

Yeah, I tried

to, when we did take the children when they were in there, you know, they were pre-teens and early teens, we did take them to see the Bach Choir at the Albert Hall. Of course, this was long past the time where we had special privileges, but it was lovely to be able to point out to them, well, that's where we used to sit. And then this was the concert that we came to every year. I do feel nostalgic. I like to tune into the Christmas carols from, I can't remember which college it is. Yes, King's. I like to do that while I'm...

Jonathan Thomas (42:55)
You

kings.

Yeah.

Amanda Graves (43:11)
wrapping my presents

Jonathan Thomas (43:11)
Yeah.

Amanda Graves (43:12)
and just remind myself that there are beautiful carols out there and beautifully sung and it's not Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.

Jonathan Thomas (43:22)
Well if you get brick box you can usually get carols from Kings live and when after it's aired so I I love carols from Kings that's that's one of my I inset one of the things I insist that we do every Christmas is have that on because it's just it's so sublime and A lot of people think oh Christmas carols. Well, no, it's real Christmas carols. Not the Christmas carols you hear on the radio

Amanda Graves (43:26)
⁓ well, think I'm going to have to. I'm going to have to do that.

Yes,

and there's different carols too. Yeah, we've got the big one over there is Once in Royal David's City, which we really don't have that here. ⁓ Obviously we've got O Come All Ye Faithful, and there are some that you'd recognize, but then there are others that Americans really wouldn't know. And I was in the school choir, so we did quite a lot of those slightly more obscure carols, I would say.

Jonathan Thomas (43:49)
Here in the USA, it's coral. Yeah.

Yeah, and I have fond memories when we went to Christmas in 2013 with our kids. Our son was like three years old at the time. Our daughter was six months old. doesn't remember. My son does remember bits and pieces of that trip, and it's actually surprising what he remembers, And it's, we...

Amanda Graves (44:23)
wow.

Jonathan Thomas (44:34)
One of my favorite memories was ⁓ hearing the choir at the local church in the town we were staying in. You could hear them practicing the Christmas service, because we were literally right down the street from it. I was like, this is great. I love this. Yeah. And then the bells on Christmas day. Yeah.

Amanda Graves (44:46)
Lovely. That is.

yes, that's

true, forgot about that too. I mean, we may have bells on Christmas day here, but we live in this subdivision that's sort of three miles from the nearest church. So I'm not sure if we do. I mean, some of the more traditional ⁓ Episcopal churches will do that here. I mean, particularly in Massachusetts, I think it was more of a thing. It's a little bit more sort of, well, like the Church of England up there, the Episcopal churches.

Jonathan Thomas (45:00)
Yeah. Yeah. We don't, we don't got belts here.

Yeah.

Amanda Graves (45:19)
that's more what you'd expect.

Jonathan Thomas (45:22)
So, well, what a fascinating discussion on the differences between British and American Christmas. And I'm sure we could go on for another hour about it, but needs must, we must move on. So what a delightful conversation. What a wonderful reminder that Christmas traditions are both worth preserving, adapting, and sometimes even laughing at. And so thank you for joining us again on the Anglotopia Podcast, Amanda, and for sharing your 40 years of, thank you for sharing your 40 years of festive cultural observations and.

Amanda Graves (45:45)
Thank you for having me.

Jonathan Thomas (45:52)
Please, you can read Amanda's column, Spilling the Tea, twice monthly on Anglotopia, where she explores a cultural divide between British and American life with wit, wisdom, and unique perspective that only comes from living both experiences as an insider. So, be sure to come to the website. It's gonna be on the homepage later today, I promise. And you can find Spilling the Tea, you can do a search, and there will be link in the show notes. So.

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, or leave a comment wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you'd like early access to new episodes, read Amanda's columns before anyone else and help support independent long form writing about British history, culture, and travel. Please consider joining the Friends of Anglotopia Club. So thank you again, Amanda, and to all our listeners, whether you're celebrating with Christmas crackers or inflatable lawn Santas, mince pies, or fruit cake, we wish you a very happy Christmas. Or is it Merry Christmas? Well...

Amanda Graves (46:44)
Thank you.

Jonathan Thomas (46:46)
After this conversation, we'll leave that choice up to you. So thank you, Amanda.

Amanda Graves (46:50)
Thank you, Jonathan.