The Christmas Pantomime

 
At Christmas, towns across Britain put on an event known as The Pantomime.  As it takes place in a theatre we shall call it a play, though Shakespeare would turn in his grave at that comparison. The plot follows a fairy tale, either English like Dick Whittington, or international such as Aladdin.  I’ll use Aladdin as the example.
 
Each pantomime will have a leading man, called the Principal Boy and is played by a young woman.  No attempt is made to hide that she is a woman playing a man’s role.  She will be dressed appropriately from the waist up, but from the waist down she will wear a leotard, fishnet tights and heels.  In case anyone misses her legs, she will slap her thigh for emphasis during the play.  No one in the audience will think it strange that everyone in the play, including the love interest (also played by a woman) can’t see that it is a woman in the role.
 
There will be at least one pantomime dame.  In Aladdin it’s his mother, the Widow Twankey.  This will be played by a middle-aged man with several kilos of makeup and a dress so large you could cross the Atlantic using it as a sail.  No one will realise the part is played by a man, and no one in the audience will think it strange.
 
There will be many jokes about current events.  I suspect this year the jokes will be about Brexit, as if the real Brexit wasn’t a farce as it is.  Though the pantomime is aimed at kids, there will be many double-entendres for the parents.
 
For instance, the Widow Twanky might say “The Sultan’s got a Grand Vizier.  Well, I’ve seen it and it’s not that grand.”
 
The actors will frequently talk to the audience and audience participation is a large part of the evening.  This takes on several traditional exchanges.
 
Aladdin will walk to the front of the stage and say, “Boys and girls, I think my wicked uncle is up to no good.  If you see him, you will tell me, won’t you.”  As he says this, the uncle will appear stage left.  The children will shout, “He’s behind you!”

“Yes,” Aladdin will say, “Just like that, but not now, when you see him.”
 
The children will shout, “He’s behind you!”
 
“Pardon?”
 
They’ll scream, “He’s behind you!”
 
“Behind me?”  Aladdin will then look behind him stage right, away from the uncle.
 
“No, he’s not.”
 
The kids are now standing up and pointing.  “The other side!”
 
“What? I can’t hear you.”
 
They are screaming with frustration now and are having to be held back by their parents. 
 
“The other side?”
 
Meanwhile the uncle will tiptoe to stage right and Aladdin will look behind him stage left.  The kids have turned scarlet and neighbours several streets away are complaining about the noise.
 
“He’s not there.”
 
The kids by now are approaching a stroke as they scream that the uncle is behind him.

“Oh no he isn’t!” Aladdin will say.
 
“Oh yes he is,” reply the audience.
 
“Oh no he isn’t.”
 
“Oh yes he is.”
 
This can continue for up to ten minutes, until the dear little cherubs are apoplexic.
 
At the end the cast will sing a song.  The tune will be a pop song from the year, but the lyrics will sum up the plot.  As the audience won’t know the words, they will be displayed on a sheet that drops down from the flies, so they can sing along.  The cast will divide the audience in half to see who can sing the loudest.
 
Christmas can be a slow time for those in the entertainment industry, so in the large cities there will be some big names in the cast.  Well-known actors (George Takei was in the Chatham Pantomime one year), or well-known athletes, such as Frank Bruno, British Heavyweight boxing champion.  Often actors from a TV soap will headline the show.  However, the further into the provinces you venture, the cheaper the celebrities become.  A rural pantomime might boast a member of the 1998 British bobsleigh team.  It’s common to see posters boasting something like Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe’s brother.
 
British people are surprised the pantomime isn’t an international phenomenon, and all the cross-dressing, oh-yes-he-is’s and rude jokes seem perfectly natural.

Until we try and explain it to foreigners.
 

Christmas Dinner

 
Christmas dinner happens sometime in the afternoon.  There is too much cooking to be ready for lunchtime, and it must be over by the time the Queen addresses the Commonwealth on television.
 
The meal is like the feeding of the five thousand in reverse.  Six people will be presented with a table groaning under the weight of food, with trays on the sideboard as well.  The menu will consist of roast turkey, roast, mashed and boiled potatoes, roast parsnip and Brussel sprouts.  These are mandated by law.  Other roast meats may be present, but in addition to the turkey, never a replacement. There is some debate as to whether Yorkshire Pudding should be present.  There are those who think it should, and there are those who are wrong.
 
Brussel sprouts, though mandated, are either loved or loathed.  For many, Christmas Day is the only time they will see a sprout.  If this is true of the cook, the sprouts will be boiled until every vitamin waves the white flag and surrenders.  This may contribute to some people’s hatred of it.
 
At each place setting there will be a Christmas Cracker.  This is the inside of a toilet roll wrapped in crepe paper and crimped at each end.  Running through the cracker will be two strips of cardboard glued in the middle with gunpowder.  A person holds one end and offers the other end to a fellow diner.  They pull, the cardboard strips provide friction to the tiny bit of gunpowder, which explodes with a crack that sends the cat clawing its way up the Christmas tree.  In reality, unless you pay for posh ones, it explodes with a pfft.  One person will be left with the part of the cracker containing the toilet roll.  Inside will be a paper crown, which you must wear.  Because it’s light you forget you are wearing it, which is fun when you visit the pub later.  The cracker will also contain a plastic toy, like a novelty moustache or a ring that squirts water.  A slip of paper will have a ‘joke’.  A truly awful joke.  Some jokes are so bad they back into genius.  Classics include “What do you call a blind reindeer?” “No idea”, and “What did the snowman say to the other snowman?”  “Can you smell carrots?”  Actually, those two are too funny to qualify for a cracker, which gives you an idea of how bad they are.
 
After the main course there are two traditional deserts.  Mince pies are individual shortcrust pastry pies filled with mincemeat.  Mincemeat contains neither mince nor meat.  They are filled with candied fruit and sugar, and the top of the pie is dusted with sugar.  It should not be possible, but a 25 gram pie contains 50 grams of sugar.  I’m diabetic.  My wife won’t allow me to eat one.  I have to sit there and watch her eat mine instead.
 
The other is Christmas pudding.  This is a large suet pudding mixed with dried fruit and brandy.  Many years ago the mixture was stirred for several hours, wrapped in cloth then boiled for several days.  Nowadays we buy them from the supermarket and microwave them.  It is covered in more brandy and set alight, the whole burning mass carried to the table.  At this point it is important to remember you are still wearing an extremely flammable paper hat.
 
When I was young we didn’t have decimal currency, because it was feared having 100 pennies to the pound would confuse old people.  We had a convoluted system of pennies and shillings and florins and crowns and pounds and guineas.  A tiny sixpenny coin was secreted in the pudding.  Whoever got the portion with the coin would have good luck, unless he choked on it and was rushed to hospital to be treated by a nearly sober doctor.
 
The traditional accompaniment to Christmas Pudding (made with and soaked in brandy) is cream that has been whipped with brandy.  Christmas pudding has the density of a neutron star, a fact you conveniently ignored when you were stuffing all that meat and potatoes.  If this is too much you can bypass the pudding and just drink half a bottle of brandy.
 

Mistletoe

 
Mistletoe is a parasitic plant that grows on trees.  It is hung from the ceiling and if someone stands under it they can be kissed by anybody.  However, as I have grown older the tradition has evolved, and now anyone standing under the mistletoe can scream, “If you come near me I’ll call the police, you old pervert.”  It will be interesting to see other’s reactions when I revive this tradition in Portugal.
 

Boxing Day

 
Boxing Day is the day after Christmas, which Americans find amusing.  This is my favourite day in the year for food.  It starts with a breakfast of turkey dripping on toast.  Dripping is formed by pouring fat from the roasting tin into a bowl.  By morning it has formed a crust of fat over a meat jelly, and is the perfect antidote to the sweet food from the day before.
 
For lunch we have cold meat, pickle and bubble-and-squeak.  The turkey (and other meat) is sliced thin.  All the leftover vegetables from the day before are mashed together and fried in a pan.  As it heats the air expands and the food forms bubbles which squeak as the air escapes.  The reason the dish is known as bubble and squeak is a mystery.  With this we eat pickled onions, Branston pickle and piccalilli.  Branston pickle is tiny diced pickled vegetables in a sweet brown sauce.  This is often eaten throughout the year with cheese.  Piccalilli is similar, but the vegetables are thicker, it’s not sweet and the sauce is the same colour as high visibility jackets.  As with sprouts, many people only see piccalilli at Christmas, but that doesn’t matter as it has a shelf life of decades.  It’s not unusual for a jar to be passed from generation to generation, only coming out on Boxing day.
 

New Year’s Eve

 
This holiday the English stole from the Scots, where it’s called Hogmanay and is in many ways celebrated more than Christmas.  It’s a time for reflection on the old year, making resolutions for the new, and drinking as much spirits as possible.  At midnight you used to be allowed to grab the person next to you and kiss them, but again this tradition has gone down the route of mistletoe.  Everyone crosses their arms, holds hands and sings a traditional song called Auld Lang Syne.  There are several verses, but no one knows what they are, and so they just chant the chorus, which repeats the words, “auld lang syne” until everyone falls over.  Given the alcohol consumed, it rarely passes one minute.  No one knows what the words mean, why it is sung or why you cross your arms, but given that you are probably drunk at this point, no one cares.
 
In Scotland you then go first footing.  This involves ringing your neighbour’s doorbell and waving a piece of coal in exchange for whisky.  Nowadays coal is rarer as a domestic fuel, so it is acceptable to wave a firelighter, charcoal or your electricity bill.  It is considered to be lucky to receive a first footer, but given that the first footer is drinking your whisky, it’s probably luckier for him.
 
Scotland then closes down for two days, and no wonder.
 
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Thus Great Britain maintains its reputation as a sober, stoic and above all, logical people