Dinner for One (or The 90th Birthday): this short British comedy film from 1963, virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, is one of Europe’s favourite holiday season movies. Starring Freddie Frinton and May Warden, it concerns an elderly lady and her butler celebrating her birthday with four imaginary friends. The butler becomes increasingly inebriated as he is forced to imitate each of the long-dead guests and drink toasts in their names. The recurring line “The same procedure as every year” has become a catch phrase across northern Europe.
For some reason this little slapstick farce has become a tradition in late December in many countries. It is broadcast every December 23 on Norwegian television and on New Year’s Eve in the rest of Scandinavia and Germany.
Similar curious broadcast traditions occur in Italy where the 1983 American comedy Trading Places has become a Christmas Eve staple, Britain where the animation of Brigg’s book The Snowman is shown every year over the holidays and in eastern Europe where a variation on the Cinderella story Tři oříšky pro Popelku is popular.
Quentin Blake (1932-) is a beloved English illustrator and author. In 1993 he was commissioned by the Post Office to create a set of stamps using characters from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
They past, they say is a foreign country; they do things differently there. Nowhere is this adage more true than in the contemplation of bizarre English Christmas cards from the Victorian era. What could have persuaded artists that these images were suitable for a Christmas greeting?
By the end of the 19th century the Santa Claus story had embedded itself in Anglophone family culture. Parents had discovered that Santa offered their children not just gifts but magic and imagination as well. In an astonishing display of altruism millions of fathers and mothers deflected the gratitude due them to an imaginary midnight Gift-Bringer. But, as this poem from 1880 shows, not all parents were that way inclined.
In 1887 the Scottish poet and novelist Robert Louis Stevenson was recovering for a moment from the lung disorder that would eventually kill him. In his convalescence he wrote his “Christmas Sermon”, a melancholy reflection on human striving. Here are a few of the notable passages from it.
To make our idea of morality centre on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men a secret element of gusto.
If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say “give them up,” for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.
To be honest, to be kind — to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation — above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself — here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be successful. There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted.
There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbors good. One person I have to make good: myself.
In his own life, then, a man is not to expect happiness, only to profit by it gladly when it shall arise: he is on duty here; he knows not how or why, and does not need to know; he knows not for what hire, and must not ask. Somehow or other, though he does not know what goodness is, he must try to be good; somehow or other, though he cannot tell what will do it, he must try to give happiness to others.
Christmas seems always to be in danger of extinction, at least according to television and cinema. Indefatigable chronicler of Christmas in popular culture, William D. Crump, has listed 53 different programs where the holiday was threatened. In his book, How the Movies Saved Christmas:228 Rescues from Clausnappers, Sleigh Crashes, Lost Presents and Holiday Disasters, Crump identifies the following five most frequent menaces:
Santa Claus or Santa surrogate or elves or reindeer are sick, injured, or incapacitated (36 films, eight of which depict Santa suffering from amnesia).
Villains sabotage or take over the North Pole (29 films).
Santa crashes his sleigh (24 films).
Christmas decorations and/or presents are lost or stolen (18 films).
Protagonists lose the Christmas spirit (17 films).
Though not among the top 5 kidnapping Santa has featured in 10 films, including the amazingly dreadful Santa Claus conquers the Martians.
Some head-scratching posers for those who like to mix Christmas and sport.
In 2013 NBA teams all wore distinct new uniforms for their Christmas Day games. What were different about these?
(a) They had sleeves for the first time.
(b) They featured corporate logos.
(c) They all had black arm bands to honour military dead.
(d) They had no player numbers on the front.
In Australia Boxing Day is the day for sports. There is always a yacht race between Hobart, Tasmania and what Australian city?
(a) Melbourne
(b) Sydney
(c) Perth
(d) Canberra
Every year the Santa Claus Winter Games are held in Sweden. What is NOT a sport in these games?
(a) Elf roping.
(b) Chimney climbing
(c) Porridge eating
(d) Reindeer racing
In the 2013 Santa Winter Games, Canada was represented by a popular actor. Was it
(a) Eric Peterson, who played the grumpy Oscar on Corner Gas
(b) William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk of Star Trek
(c) John Dunsworth, also known as Mr. Lahey of Trailer Park Boys
(d) Steve Smith, who was Red Green of the Red Green Show
In 1977 the NFL held a rare Christmas Eve game, between Oakland Raiders and Baltimore Colts. It went into double overtime with the winning touchdown immortalized by a famous catch. Its nickname was
(a) The Immaculate Reception
(b) The Ghost to the Post
(c) The Hail Mary to Larry
(d) The Grab Heard Round the World
“The greatest hockey game ever played.” That is what they called the match-up on New Year’s Eve 1976 between the Soviet Red Army team who were touring NHL cities over the Christmas holidays and the Montreal Canadiens. What was the result?
(a) A 3-3 tie.
(b) Red Army 4 Canadiens 2
(c) Canadiens 6 Red Army 1
(d) Canadiens win 4-3 in overtime.
In what country is it customary to play hockey after church on Christmas?
(a) Ethiopia
(b) Finland
(c) Sweden
(d) Iceland
In World War I there was a Christmas truce between British and German troops with a soccer game played between the trenches. What was the score?
(a) Germany 3-British 2
(b) 3-3 tie
(c) Game called on account of renewed artillery fire
(d) British 3-Germans 2
In 1862 two teams made up of members of the Union Army faced off against each other in a Christmas Day baseball game in Hilton Head, South Carolina in front of 40,000 spectators. The team representing the 165th New York Volunteer Infantry had a distinctive uniform. What made them so special?
(a) They were the first sports uniform to feature player names.
(b) They wore red fezzes with blue tassels.
(c) They sported blue balloon pants, or “bloomers”
(d) They played without shirts and their numbers were written on their skin with coal dust.
In England in the 1500s all sports on Christmas were banned except
(a) Football
(b) Cheese-rolling
(c) Competitive drinking
(d) Archery
ANSWERS
1. Answer: D 2. Answer: B 3. Answer: D 4. Answer: C. He gave up cigarettes to train for the events and could run nearly 100 yards. The 2013 games were won by a Santa from Hong Kong. 5. Answer: B. The catch was made by Dave Casper, whose nickname was “The Ghost”. 6. Answer: A. Montreal outplayed the Soviets but Ken Dryden let in two soft ones over his left shoulder. Vladislav Tretiak was the star as Montreal outshot the Army 38-13. The photo above shows Tretiak surrounded by Pete Mahovlich and Yvan Cournoyer. 7. Answer: A. In fact the word for Christmas and the Ethiopian variety of field hockey are the same. 8. Answer: A. There is a lot of argument about the final score from different sources but everybody agrees the Germans won. 9. Answer: B. They were “Zouaves”, troops who wore uniforms like French Arab soldiers: red balloon pants, ornamental cloth jackets, white spats, and fezzes with blue tassels. 10. Answer: D
Leading up to Christmas, parang music can be heard just about everywhere in Trinidad.
Christmas in Trinidad and Tobago is a time to look back on the old and prepare for the new year. The house must be given a thorough cleaning and decorated; a portion of the Christmas budget always goes to buying something new for the house at this time of year. New curtains are hung, windows are washed, furniture is recovered, long-delayed repairs are made, a new piece of linoleum is laid and the paint brush is busy. The famous Black Fruit Cake must be prepared well in advance to let the flavours be soaked up. The same is true for the home-made drinks: the plantain wine, sorrel, ginger beer and Ponche à Creme.
Christmas food is plentiful with the main course usually a ham, or perhaps a turkey, backed by sweet potatoes, pastelles, calaloo and crab, pigeon peas and rice. Extras must be oprepared for the relatives returning for the holiday from North America and visiros that are sure to drop in on Christmas and Boxing Day. Most island families will go to church for the Christmas Eve midnight service or the morning service on Christmas Day.
The most distinctive aspect of a Trinidadian Christmas is the music of the season, parang. The term is derived from the Spanish parranda or “spree”– Trinidad was a Spanish colony until 1797 when it fell to the British. The music itself is a lively combination of Spanish and Venezuelan influences which melded over the centuries. It was customary for groups of parranderos to go from house to house singing these Christmas songs (in Spanish for the most part) and receiving hospitality in return. Like the parrandistas of Christmas in Puerto Rico they have songs to gain admission to the house and different topics to sing once they are admitted. Today the traditional acoustic instruments have given way to electrified instruments but the spirit of love for the season and hospitality remain the same. Traditionalists worry about the modernization of the art form. A new variety entitled soca-parang has emerged, praising Christmas with different rhythms and English lyrics.
Once Christmas has passed Trinidadians begin to prepare for the onset of Carnival
Fans of antique Christmas cards know Nimble Nick as the chubby little boy in a Santa Claus suit adorning the work of the Whitney company in the 1910s and 1920s. His picture is often accompanied by a little verse or the image of a similarly-clad little girl.
