Christmas is the biggest event in the British year by a considerable margin, and its shape is remarkably consistent across the country — the same meal, at roughly the same hour, followed by the same television.
Christmas Day
The meal
Christmas dinner is eaten at lunchtime, usually between one and three. The standard spread is roast turkey, roast potatoes done in goose fat, pigs in blankets (small sausages wrapped in bacon), stuffing, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, carrots, parsnips and Brussels sprouts. The sprouts are traditional, divisive, and much improved by anyone who has learned not to boil them for forty minutes.
Afterwards comes Christmas pudding — a dense, dark, boozy steamed pudding, set alight with brandy at the table and served with brandy butter or cream. Almost nobody has room for it, and it is eaten anyway.
Crackers
Christmas crackers are pulled at the table before eating. Each contains a paper crown, a small plastic toy of no value, and a joke of deliberately terrible quality. The paper crown must be worn for the entire meal. This is not negotiable, and it applies to everyone at the table regardless of age or dignity.
The King’s Speech
At three o’clock, the monarch’s Christmas broadcast goes out on television and radio. It has run every year since 1932, and although far fewer people watch it live than once did, a substantial number of households still stop and put it on.
Christmas Eve and the run-up
Children leave a mince pie and a glass of sherry for Father Christmas, and a carrot for the reindeer. Stockings are hung at the end of the bed rather than by a fireplace, and are opened first thing before the tree presents.
The weeks before bring their own fixtures: office Christmas parties, carol services, the pantomime, school nativity plays, and the switching-on of high street lights. Christmas markets, largely German in origin, have become near-universal in the last twenty years.
What is closed
More than visitors expect. On Christmas Day virtually everything shuts — shops, pubs, restaurants — and, uniquely, the entire rail network stops. No trains run at all in Britain on the 25th, and almost none on the 26th. Anyone planning to travel over Christmas needs to know this well in advance.
Boxing Day and after
The 26th is a second public holiday for leftovers, football and the sales. The period between then and New Year has no real name and no real structure — a sort of national fugue state in which nobody is entirely sure what day it is, and few people are properly at work.