A tradition remarketed

Christmas crackers are a thoroughly British tradition that have only just in the last few years made it over to the United States. For many years they were pretty much impossible to find. Nowadays, you may have to look hard, but it is possible to find them. Most Americans are still pretty clueless about them though - the Americans I've met who know about them have all spent a Christmas in the UK or have a British relative. So I was surprised, not to say stunned, to see this in the seasonal aisle at my local supermarket this morning:

Yes, that's a box of crackers! ( Or "6 Celebration Cracker" as the box says!) Yes, they are red, white, and blue - with stars but no stripes! Yes, it's completely the wrong time of year for crackers. Remember though, that most Americans have no idea what crackers are and you have an opportunity to rework the tradition - the box reads:

"Party Surprise Fun!!
Great for birthday parties, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years . . . and more."

I didn't take a closer look at the box to see if there are instructions on what to do with the crackers - after all, if you haven't seen one before, it's not necessarily obvious! I wonder what's in them, and if Americans will wear the paper hats if there are any. I may have to go back tomorrow and buy a box. I wonder, if they sell well, if we'll start to see crackers for every 'occasion' - Halloween, Valentines' Day, Hannukah, weddings, baby showers . . . So much marketing potential that's been missed in the UK!

Tea time!

I decided to have a cup of tea instead of a cup of coffee with breakfast this morning. My son was appalled: "Tea this early in the day! Tea isn't for the morning, it's for teatime in the afternoon!" He knows I have an alarm that goes off inside my head sometime midafternoon to remind me to have a cup of tea. We'll be out somewhere and I'll suddenly feel the urge for a cup of tea and know without looking at my watch that it must be sometime between 3 and 4.  The kids and DH know that if I suddenly say "Ding, ding, ding" it means that alarm in my head has just gone off! It hadn't occurred to me though, until this morning, that the kids have never seen me (or anyone) drink tea at any other time of day!

DH bought me a mug like this for Christmas this year

Halloween Take 2

I can't imagine Guy Fawkes' night being postponed. The whole point is that it's on the 5th of November. The same with the 4th of July - the whole point is the date. But Halloween - apparently that can easily be rescheduled to a more convenient date.

We had a grand total of 3 trick-or-treaters last Monday after the snow storm. Our neighborhood was dark, but there were no power lines down as where we live they are actually all underground. We thought it might be fun to go trick-or-treating when it was so dark outside! However, it seemed that most people in our neighborhood had fled to places that still had heat and light and trick-or-treating was delayed townwide to November 5th. So here we are ready for Halloween all over again. After all, there is SOME candy left from last week - I haven't eaten it all yet (only the good stuff) and I might as well give the last of it away (as it's all the candies I don't like anyway) ;-)  Note to self: next year only buy candy you DON'T like!!

The Halloween snowmen have all melted, but the pumpkins and other decorations are still looking good. 

Happy Valentine's Day

Ice sculpture downtown this weekend

Not everyone in the world celebrates St Valentine's Day, although Hallmark is working hard at changing that. Despite the word Saint in its name, it's yet another holiday with pagan origins. I had heard the story of a man called Valentine who was put to death in Roman times, but didn't know some of the other details. Women lining up so that men can hit them, believing that would make them fertile?? I'll take the Hallmark version of the holiday, thank you very much!

Pysanky

Our family traditions regarding Easter when I was growing up were simple - lamb for lunch and a large chocolate Easter egg each. One year for breakfast on Easter Sunday, my mother gave us eggs that looked like real eggs, but in fact they were made of some kind of hard candy with chocolate yolks. She gave them to us in egg cups as though they were soft-boiled. We spotted immediately that there was something 'not right' about them as they were cold. She tried to blame that on us having taken too long to get downstairs for breakfast. I think she finally had to tell us that they were a joke when we started banging them on the table - they were VERY hard! Those were the longest lasting Easter eggs we ever got - it took us weeks to lick our way through to the chocolate yolks! (We did get regular chocolate eggs that year too - I'm sure those disappeared very quickly!)

DH's family likes to decorate real hens' eggs, which usually means simply dipping them in some kind of dye to color them. This year, DS and I had the chance to take a class in creating pysanky - Ukranian Easter eggs. I wasn't sure if DS would have the dexterity to do a good job, but I needn't have worried. The teacher knew what she was doing when she said "first grade and up" and he was quite capable of handling the class, open flames and all! He realized immediately that the traditional pysanky were beyond his skills and simply created his own style. After some complaints as we got started, he really enjoyed himself. He not only asked if we can take the class again next year, but wanted to go out right away and buy the tools so that we can teach his sister next weekend.

We'd been warned to wear old clothes as the dye we used is a permanent one. I hadn't realized that the eggs we would be using would be regular, raw, eggs. I'd assumed they would have to be hard-boiled or blown, but apparently it is actually easier to work with raw eggs. In the end, although we both ended up with multi-colored hands, I was the one who dropped a couple of eggs, not DS, and neither of us ruined our clothes.




I think we've just found ourselves a new tradition :-)

The wearing of the green

Last weekend we went to visit friends for a St. Patrick's Day party. This is not a 'holiday' I have ever really celebrated before - though I did go to the St. Patrick's Day parade in South Boston the year that I was dating a bloke who grew up there. True to stereotype, there was much drinking involved before, during, and after the parade - to the point where I was the one who drove us home at the end of the day even though he had promised he would stay sober.

Americans love to decorate for the holidays and even people who have no ties to Ireland at all will often decorate their house for St. Patrick's Day. Our friends however, are of Irish descent so we were not surprised to find the house well and truly decorated. Many Americans don't realize that St Patrick's Day has long been a much bigger deal in the US than in Ireland itself. It was only in the 1990's that it began to be celebrated in Ireland the way it is here with parades and so on because the Irish realized it was a great tourist attraction. St Patrick's Day was of course originally a religious holiday and up until the 1970s, Irish laws mandated that pubs be closed on March 17th!

At our friends' house, there was a holiday wreath of leprechauns on the front door, and an Irish flag on the front of the house:


As we entered the house, everyone was given a "Kiss me, I'm Irish" necklace to wear:


I realized I had probably committed a major social faux-pas as I had neglected to wear anything green. Our host was wearing an Ireland rugby shirt - very appropriate as Ireland won on Saturday - and his children had really dressed for the occasion:



There were shamrocks and leprechauns all over the place:




There were even holiday-themed craft projects for the children to complete. There were green beads and safety pins to make brooches, and stickers to decorate these shamrock shapes. It might be difficult to see in this photo, but that's a pot of gold at the end of each rainbow.


The beer menu included Guinness and Harp, and there was Jamieson's Irish Whisky on hand too. Just about every stereotypically 'Irish' item you could think of for St Patrick's Day - with the exception (thankfully) of green beer! I'm looking forward to celebrating St Patrick's Day again next year!

Christmas traditions

For many years after I first came to the United States, I was often a guest in someone else's home at Christmas. When I eventually got married it was really nice to finally be able to celebrate Christmas in my own home and start creating some of our own traditions as a family.

Some things we do a little differently to when I was growing up. We leave the stockings downstairs, but Santa always delivers one present upstairs to each of the kids. Breakfast on Christmas morning is cinnamon rolls. (Although this year it may be banana blueberry muffins as they are already made!) Lunch is never turkey, as we have turkey at Thanksgiving and for some reason DH thinks it's too soon only a month later to have another turkey. Not really - we just choose to have something different. As DH had to work until the end of the day this Christmas Eve, he is not making beef Wellington as he did last year. There will still be beef though, and salmon for those of us who don't like beef very much. No Christmas pudding or Christmas cake. After my recent attempt at making mince pies, I'm thinking I should try making a real English Christmas cake next year and am hoping my mother still has the recipe she used when we were little. I do make a 'kid's trifle' - with jelly/jello instead of sherry, but mostly I'm the only one who eats it. (Trifle makes for a yummy breakfast on Boxing Day!) DH surprised me this evening by producing a box of English Christmas crackers - the kind that go bang and have silly paper hats in them.

I got the following via email from friends a couple of days ago:

1st Annual Christmas Day Open House
Friday December 25th, 12:00 noon -10PM

For Kids & Childish Adults ▪ Dress Exceedingly Casual ▪ Light Fare Served All-Day
Leave your present-opening mess at home & come mess up our house, instead!

Although we've always considered Christmas Day a family day, I think we will take them up on their invitation. There's room in the routine for a new tradition!

Where is Mr Kipling when I need him?

Mince pies are not easy to find here in the US, and when you do find them they are often quite expensive. Most Christmases I just go without, although occasionally I do find some imports and decide to indulge in a box. This year, inspired by Karen, I decided to try making some.

I'm not sure when the last time was that I made mince pies, if ever. I think I need to practice. The store-bought mincemeat was acceptable, but the pastry left something to be desired. They did look quite nice though:


Maybe if I master making mince pies, another year I'll try making a real Christmas cake.

Birthday party food

A while ago Parent Hacks website posted a 'wonderful' idea one of their readers had come up with: serving jello (jelly) in individual serving sized paper cups. Hmm - we were doing that years ago in the UK for birthday parties. I've never seen jelly (jello) served at a birthday party in the US. Over here, the food at kids' birthday parties is usually pizza followed by cake served with ice cream.

When I was a kid in the UK, we had sandwiches (cut into little triangles), jelly in little paper cups with whipped cream on top , and 'fairy cakes':
(Picture from citybumpkin's blog.)

I remember chocolate blancmange rabbits on lime jelly grass too. I don't think they sell blancmage in the US, not that I've ever looked for it. (No Angel Delight either, which I remember we often had for dessert - I loved the butterscotch flavour!) Here's a picture of a blancmange rabbit, though the red jelly looks weird to me - it really should have been green!


(Photo from howarew's photostream at Flickr.)

The actual birthday cake might or might not have been eaten at the party, but guests were usually sent home with a slice wrapped up in a paper serviette. Americans I've mentioned this too all think that is really weird!

What do you remember about the food served at children's birthday parties when you were growing up? Has kids' birthday party food in the UK changed?

Lunch

. . . is nearly ready. And , yes, it includes green bean casserole (as discussed in the comments over at Pond Parleys) because my father-in-law likes it! DD has already announced her intention not to eat it! I'd like it better without the fried onions on top. Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving tradition

A housemate of mine introduced me to this many years ago - the New England Thanksgiving tradition of listening to Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie.

Shoot your own turkey

It must be nearly Thanksgiving! Apparently the turkey shooting is more organized than I thought - I had visions of people just wandering out into the woods to look for turkeys.

Halloween

Nappy Valley Girl's excellent blog post about Halloween has prompted me to write about it yet again, even though I wrote about it in 2006, 2007 and 2008!

The kids have been looking forward to Halloween for weeks now. The costume planning started back at the beginning of September. We live in a neighborhood that is a great place to go trick-or-treating. There are lots of kids around the same age as ours and they all like to get together and do the rounds of the houses together. This year they have been trying to coordinate their costumes on a theme. It's working, kind of. My two are going to be a hot dog and a bottle of ketchup. (One costume borrowed and the other bought at a tag sale.) The neighbors' kids are going to be containers of popcorn, candy, and 'a movie'.

It will be a two-day celebration this year as we have been invited to a friend's house on Friday for a 'pumpkin carving party'. (We get pumpkins a couple of weeks or more in advance and leave them out on the doorstep, but never carve them until a night or two before as they start to rot if the weather is warm.) Then on Saturday, one of the neighbors is hosting a party for the kids from 4 to 6, before they all go out trick-or-treating at 6.

Although we really enjoy Halloween, we keep it much lower key than many people. No inflatable lawn decorations for example!


Nor do I decorate the the house inside and out the way some people do. This year I did learn about a new tradition, which I'm wishing I'd heard of earlier because it's probably too late to implement it now. Apparently some people have their children leave the Halloween candy in front of the fireplace when they go to bed. Overnight a witch removes the candy and leaves gifts for the children instead. Of course, the witch must end up very fat from eating all the candy, and that would definitely be a bad thing, but I suppose she could take the candy to work to share. Or not.

Special days

In a recent blog post, Iota was commenting on the variety of festivals here in the US. I loved her comment about how the 'seasonal' aisles in the stores seem to exist in a time zone of their own. Christmas things are in the stores already and we haven't even had Halloween yet. In fact, in one store I was in this afternoon, there was a distinct lack of Halloween items, and what was there was already 50% off! I give it another week or so till the New Year's Eve decorations are on the shelves!

Iota noted the colours associated with various holidays here in the US:

Valentine’s Day: red and pink
St Patrick’s Day: green
Easter: yellow (and pastel shades generally)
Memorial Day and Fourth of July: red, white and blue
Hallowe’en: orange, black and purple
Christmas: green and red.

I'd add blue and silver for Hannukah and red, green and black for Kwanzaa and that the holidays each have specific shapes associated with them too:

Valentine’s Day: hearts
St Patrick’s Day: shamrocks
Easter: easter eggs, bunnies and chicks
Memorial Day and Fourth of July: stars and stripes (of course)
Hallowe’en: pumpkins and ghosts
Thanksgiving: turkeys
Hannukah: Menorahs and dreidels
Christmas: Christmas trees, holly and candy canes
Kwanzaa: kinara (candelabras)
Winter (if one is decorating for the season but avoiding specific holidays to be politically correct): snowmen and snowflakes

There are lots of other 'special days' that don't necessarily involve decorations that the kids learn about in school:

Arbor Day
Chinese New Year
Cinco de Mayo
Earth Day
Father's Day
Flag Day
Grandparents Day
Groundhog Day
Labor Day
Lincoln's Birthday
Mardi Gras
Martin Luther King Day
Mother's Day
Patriots Day
Presidents Day
Rosh Hashanah
Veteran's Day
Yom Kippur

Given the shortage of school holidays over here, they do help mark the passing of the year, even though most of them are not actually days off school. I would love to have the kids follow a 190 day English school year with regular holidays instead of the 180 days of school with most of the holidays in the summer. DD was horrified to hear that in the UK the kids are still in school till the middle of July or later. I bet she'd love to have a 2 week holiday at Christmas though! This year she'll be in school until 3 p.m. on December 23rd - what do you think of that, Auntie England?

The country fair

When I was growing up, the fair visited town once a year in June. They set up in the town car park and Thursday night was 'trial night'. All the rides were half price. Supposedly this was because they were checking that they were all correctly set up. (I was never allowed/never wanted to go on trial night!) The fair had all the usual fair things - a merry-go-round, waltzers, bumper cars, a big wheel, fishing for ducks, candy floss . . . It was loud and fun and we looked forward to it. Apparently the future of the annual fair is now in doubt because the car park where it was held is about to be lost to a Sainsbury's supermarket.

Around here there is not just one but several fairs within easy driving distance each year. All of them are held at dedicated fairgrounds that are used for a variety of gatherings over the year. The one we went to last weekend is the traditional end of summer event for our family, and many others, as it is always held the weekend before school starts. It is, of course (this IS America after all!) bigger than the fair in my hometown. Perhaps not so much in the number of rides, but certainly with the sheer quantity of other activities! It's a sort of cross between a funfair, Women's Institute show, and Young Farmer's Club event.

I would have said that there was nothing like our local New England fairs in the UK but I bet if we visited the Cheshire County Show nowadays we would find it very similar to the show we went to last weekend. The Cheshire County Show was in somewhat of a decline when I was growing up and we never went to it but it has changed significantly in the past few years. It's just another reminder to me of how long I've been away from the UK and how careful I have to be when speaking about it. So much has changed over there in the last 24 years! The UK I left does not exist any more.

Christmas thoughts

I miss mince pies at Christmas time! Occasionally our local supermarket has them, but they are in the import aisle and very expensive. I suppose I could buy them via mail order, but they're even more expensive that way. I miss Christmas cake too - REAL Christmas cake though - not the nasty dry stuff you find here in the US masquerading as fruitcake. DARK fruitcake that was made (or bought) back in September and has been fed a regular diet of brandy (maybe a little Guinness) ever since so that the fruit is nice and MOIST and with marzipan and royal icing on top. Sigh! One year I will get my act together and make one. That way I'd get one exactly the way I want - without cherries which I always pick out! I suppose I could make some mince pies too. I made a green tomato pie back in September and was surprised to find that it was remarkably similar to mince pie - but then again, with a ton of brown sugar, raisins and ginger, the tomatoes didn't really contribute much to the flavour!

It is possible to get Christmas crackers here in the US now. Not 20 odd years ago though - or at least nowhere where I shopped. Even so, a confused American blogger in the UK recently referred to them as "cylindrical "bang" packages" and clearly had never heard of them, let alone seen them before. Of course it's the same here as in England - cheap crackers have cheap junk inside them. Expensive crackers have better quality junk. Our crackers this year came from The Christmas Tree Shops so I don't know why we bothered. The internationalization of holiday traditions goes both ways as last time I was in the UK for Christmas I noticed that it is possible to buy candy canes over there now. Again, that wasn't true when I first came to the US.

Thanksgiving in New England

One advantage of celebrating Thanksgiving in New England as opposed to some other areas of the United States is that once the fridge is full, the garage can become a walk-in fridge.


At least this time it all went on a table instead of on the steps!

Thanksgiving

I loved the very first Thanksgiving I ever experienced. I was living in a dorm (hall of residence) and was staying there over the long weekend. It was the only dorm on campus that catered specifically to international and graduate students, and as such was the only one that did not close for vacations. It emptied out though. Even many of the international students who had no family or friends in the US to visit chose to travel for those few days. A few of us remained behind and we planned a Thanksgiving lunch.

Sometime in the morning we congregated in the area outside the tiny kitchen and started to get our feast ready. We had the most enormous turkey. It would probably have fed 15 or 20 people but there were (to the best of my recollection) only 6 of us, none of whom had ever cooked a turkey before. Somewhere I have a photo of Andy determinedly shoving every last ounce of a very large quantity of stuffing into the bird. It didn't occur to any of us until sometime after lunch that the turkey was not going to be cooked until sometime in the early evening. Ah well - not to worry - we had snacks and beer and we had nowhere else to be! We sat around all day chatting. I seem to remember some homework being finished. In the mid afternoon it began to snow for the first time that winter just as Andy and Sarah headed outside with some scissors and attacked some of the campus evergreens to get some greenery for a centerpiece for the table. I think we even had candles on the table when we finally sat down to eat - strictly against the rules of course, but there was no one around to stop us!

Of course we ended up with enough food for several days, especially as we decided to make soup with the turkey carcass. None of the campus dining rooms was open and it was much more convenient to keep eating turkey than to go out shopping again or go to a restaurant. (Back then I still hadn't mastered the concept of calling for pizza!)

All in all, it was an extremely pleasant day. Some of my later Thanksgivings were not so relaxed. I eventually got fed up of people inviting me over "because you can't be alone on Thanksgiving!" It felt like people who celebrate Christmas not understanding that some people don't and not realizing that because non-Christians don't celebrate Christmas they're really don't care whether they spend the day in a special way or not. I remember choosing to be alone on at least one Thanksgiving because it was just easier. I remember one Thanksgiving spent with other non-Americans and us all laughing together at how all the Americans we knew had been so concerned that we might be on our own on such a 'special' day that meant nothing to us.

Nowadays, I enjoy Thanksgiving again, and not just because we get a couple of days off work! It's also nice to spend time with family, some of whom we don't get to see very often. Although the children never had a chance to meet their great-grandparents, they have a great-aunt and uncle and a great-great aunt who will be spending the day with us. Of course not everyone can make it, and this will be the first Thanksgiving since my mother-in-law died, so we will make a point of thinking of those who are not with us.

I finally understand now the willingness of Americans to open their homes to me at Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is not a religious holiday, but it is an American holiday. It means more to Americans of course than non-Americans, but it's a holiday everyone can enjoy. It's a good excuse to spend extra time with family and friends, to take stock of our lives and of course to be thankful for what we have. This year we made a point of asking a friend of ours who we thought would be on his own if he would like to join us. It wasn't so much that we were horrified that he might be alone on Thanksgiving, but more the attitude that if he wasn't going somewhere else we'd love to spend some extra time with him! Looking back, I'm sure that some of the invitations I received were made with similar motivations that I perhaps misinterpreted. Ah well, that's the nature of cross-cultural communication!

I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving whether you're celebrating it or not. If you're not - take a moment to count your blessings anyway! You don't have to be American to do that, and it's a good thing to do from time to time!

Cultural knowledge

When DD asked yet again this year what they eat in England for Thanksgiving, I realized we have been failing miserably to teach her about both her cultures. It was brought home to me even more when I realized after reading Daffodilly's post about Bonfire Night, that my children have absolutely no idea what it is! Sadly, our children are really not bi-cultural at all, though they don't go quite as far as chanting that "England is evil." (Well, they haven't yet, but it's a while since we've been back there - DS really doesn't remember the UK at all at this point!)

Perhaps one day I will have to make good on my threat to send them to live with their cousins in England for a year or so . . .

Scary pumpkins

DD commented as we walked out of the house today, "Mom, the pumpkins are looking really scary today."
Scary? Today, but not yesterday? In broad daylight? I didn't understand at first, but that's because I wasn't looking at the pumpkins . . . when I did, I saw what she meant.

They were beginning to go mouldy:


And one was beginning to ooze and collapse - those horizontal wrinkles weren't there yesterday:

Apparently it's not been cold enough recently - with unseasonably warm temperatures over the last week (in the 60s at times during the day), the pumpkins were beginning to rot already. Given what I paid for them and what a short time they lasted, the ceramic pumpkins I've seen on sale are beginning to look like an excellent bargain in comparison. Of course, the ceramic ones wouldn't be as much fun to prepare each year . . .