December is finally upon us and this means one thing. The Christmas season is well and truly underway. Playing Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ on repeat won’t attract raised eyebrows from those who overhear and Christmas enthusiasts can now hang hundreds of fairy lights on the exterior of their homes without fear of being reprimanded.
While quintessential Christmas traditions like eating mince pies, eagerly awaiting Christmas TV adverts and turkey Christmas dinners are something to look forward to every year, many revellers are starting to seek something different.
A poll by Tenderstem has found that 70% of Brits are bored of repeating the same traditions every Christmas as 58% of people say they eat the same foods, 66% saying they celebrate with the same people and 50% saying they decorate their homes the same way every year.
If you’re one of the many people eager to change things up this Christmas, a way to do that could be to incorporate Christmas traditions from other cultures around the world. But you don’t need to worry about exactly how to do that. Here are a few ways you can freshen up your Christmas celebrations in 2022.
Bash a sparkly Christmas pinata: Mexicans usually feature sparkly and glitzy star-shaped pinatas with seven points in their Christmas celebrations. The pinatas are usually filled with sweets, peanuts, fruits and other small gifts. Make your festivities even more fun by including a Mexican Christmas pinata and getting everyone involved in bashing it open to get at the goodies inside. Make it even more special by starting a pre-Christmas family tradition of making your own pinatas which includes one special gift from each person – a sort of randomised Secret Santa.
Sing Christmas carols and eat with your neighbours: If you’d like to add some Caribbean tradition to your Christmas celebrations, look to residents of the beautiful island of Martinique who visit their neighbours singing Christmas carols. But they don’t just sing – they also bring with them delicious food like pork stew, yams and boudin créole, a Creole blood sausage. To adopt this, get all your neighbours involved and make it into a street-wide celebration where carols and food start on one end of the street and culminates in a merry party at the last house.
Swap children’s advent calendars for Icelandic shoes: In Iceland, thirteen days before Christmas, children leave their best shoes by the window with the hope that the 13 Yule Lads, mischievous characters from Icelandic folklore, will fill their shoes with candy. This is a great way to shake things up if you’re tired of buying the same old chocolate advent calendars from the supermarket. To make it even more special, make a list of their thirteen favourite confections and fill shoes with only one type of sweet treat for each of the thirteen nights.
Take a hint from Barbados and add a jug jug to Christmas dinner: Brits love the traditional spread which includes roast turkey, pigs in blankets, stuffing, Yorkshire pudding, gravy and potatoes. However, your Christmas table could feature jug jug, a rich Barbadian dish made with pigeon peas, pork, beef, pepper, guinea corn and butter. Serve it up in a casserole dish and give it pride of place next to your turkey.
Celebrate with a barbecue grill like New Zealanders: Christmas falls in the summertime in New Zealand and Kiwi’s like to celebrate with a barbecue – complete with a variety of meats, vegetables and seafood and a pavlova – followed by a trip to the beach. The UK has no such luck with the weather in December. However, those who have a hankering for a barbecue celebration at Christmas need not be discouraged. Host a winter barbecue at home. Repositioning your barbecue closer to your back door, leaving the lid on the grill, having outdoor heating and hot drinks, and wrapping up warm can make all the difference and will help you have a Christmas barbecue to rival a Kiwi’s.
Leave a shoe for Sinterklaas on Christmas Eve: Sinterklaas is what the Dutch call Saint Nicholas – or Santa Claus – and on Christmas Eve, little Dutch kinderen leave wooden shoes by the chimney or back door. In the morning, they return to find their shoes filled with sweet treats and little presents. So instead of kids leaving milk and cookies for Santa, tell them to leave a shoe so he can give them treats in addition to the amazing gifts he has for them in his sleigh.
Celebrate like Nigerians:. If you’re tired of doing the same thing on Christmas day every year, take notes from Nigeria and turn your semi-quiet dinner into a boisterous party for family and friends. If you want to go all out, serve dishes like jollof rice, pounded yam and goat meat and make sure drinks are flowing aplenty. But don’t forget the music because it’s not really a Nigerian party without an abundance of Afrobeats music. So prepare a playlist filled with Afrobeats hits to keep the party going into the early hours.
SophisticateQueen 