I did it, I did it! I made it through Christmas without mentioning brussel sprouts! Oh right, I just mentioned them. But then you have to, don’t you? I mean Christmas would hardly be Christmas if you didn’t at least mention brussel sprouts. I love them now, but in our family we used to call them the vegetables no-one likes but you have to have at Christmas because it’s traditional. So traditional in fact that I decided today’s entry should have at least one brussel sprout in the title. But what, exactly? “O come all ye brussel sprouts”? “The first brussel sprout”? “I saw three brussel sprouts”? “Grandma got run over by a brussel sprout”?
In the true spirit of the season, my sister used to throw hers into the back of the toy cupboard. It wasn’t a very traditional Christmas in our house other than the holly and the Christmas tree. And the brussel sprout tossing. We didn’t kill any wrens or leave any whiskey and mince pies for Santa, and carol singers didn’t come to the door. There only were about half-a-dozen children in the neighbourhood anyway, so even if anyone had thought of it we probably wouldn’t have made a very joyful noise. Eventually the town that had seemed so far away grew up and ate little neighbourhoods like ours for breakfast before moving on in search of lunch and dinner, but I don’t recall the increased numbers resulting in any more Christmas traditions. Our own traditions involved a lot of visiting, many days of turkey dinners and cold turkey sandwiches, and chocolate in front of the TV and an open fire. Every year we all annotated the double issue of the Radio Times, putting our mark on the TV programs we each wanted to watch over Christmas and New Year, then missed most of them either because we were out or because there was only one television between the lot of us.
Decorations were kept up until “twelfth night” which was said to be 6th January because of course “it’s the twelfth day of Christmas, isn’t it?” There was never any discussion about it, and never a dissenting voice saying “wait a minute, that doesn’t add up!” Nowadays I do hear discussions about it, so did a little reading and discovered that it seems to boil down to whether the twelve days are called “the twelve days of Christmas” or “the twelve days following Christmas.” My grandmother used to have a bookmark that said “here I fell asleep.” Well this is where I would put it. If the twelfth night means “Christmas is over, get back to work!” I’ll settle for making it as late as I can get away with.
2015-12-27
The Blethering Ant 