British vs American Christmas: The Showdown
Are there other places where every Christmas, the entire country obsesses over three boring brands of chocolate? Besides Britain, I mean.
At Christmas, British people dream of chocolate: Quality Street, Celebrations, and Heroes, all in giant plastic containers with dubious claims of recyclability.
That’s it, that’s the menu of choices.
They’re made by three different companies, Nestle, Mars and Cadbury, but all are pretty mundane.
This is serious stuff: at my office, there was a poll and almost everybody voted.
It’s as if there were only three Christmas songs — by Slade, Wizzard and Wham — and they were endlessly repeated wherever you go.
Oh wait……..
British and American Christmases have similar roots, but somewhere along the line, they diverged.
Can I start by saying “God Save the Queen” is a dreary tune (The less said about “God Save the King” the better)?
It might set the tone for British Christmas carols.
There’s actual different, gloomier tunes to familiar carols such as “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
The classic British, non-American, Christmas carol is “In the Bleak Midwinter,” to my knowledge, the only…
