Top 5 things that only a British Expat misses at Christmas

Does the sound of Noddy Holder yelling “It’s CHRRRIIIISTMAAASSSS” ring in your ears every time you think of the festive season? Do coloured Christmas lights and tinsel (the proper kind, not that lamenta shite. If you know what lamenta is extra points) adorn your tree? Are your cupboards stocked with minced pies? Is Christmas Eve best spent in the pub with your mates resulting in the cruel and unusual punishment of having a hangover with young children on Christmas morning? Do you like sprouts? Does your mother shout “not a sausage pricked, not a pot washed?” If you answered yes to many or all of these, you are indeed British. If you spend a lot of your Christmas explaining these things to others, you are probably a British expat.

Top 5 things a British Expat misses at Christmas

1. Truly British Christmas songs.
   Cliff, Slade, Wizard, The Darkness to name a few. I just don’t hear these festive classics in Canada and they are one of my favourite things about going home for the holidays. Turning BBC radio 2 on in the car and belting these bad boys out. British festive culture 101.
   
2. The food.
   – Good minced pies are hard to come by in Canada and I wont even try to make them after the penis  unicorn cake debacle at my daughter’s second birthday (that’s another blog post).
   – Pickled onions. They cost an arm and a bloody leg here ($8.99 for a jar of sweet skins? Pisstake) and they’re quite hard to find.
   – Selection boxes don’t exist and that my friends is a SHAME. Remember the joy of a selection box for breakfast followed by lamenting the cost of a freddo?
   – Brandy cream is something I’ve never seen here. I’m beginning to think Canadian’s don’t douse everything in booze the same way we do.
   – Cadbury’s minature heros. Enough said on that matter.
   
3. The pub on Christmas Eve. Now maybe this is just a Swansea thing but we go to the pub every Christmas Eve, drink too much and then go home for my parents’ annual Christmas gathering. I know at least several other people who silent sob into their stockings and knock back the buckfizz hair of the dog on a Christmas morning while putting on a brave face as their kids push screaming toys into their faces.
   
4. The anticipation of a white Christmas. If you’re from most of the UK, Wales in particular, the papers go into a frenzy leading up to Christmas about “Snowmaggedon” and the chances of a “white Christmas”. It never happens but we don’t give up hope each year. That my friends is the British optimism that I love so much.
   
5. British Christmas TV specials.
   -The Vicar of Dibley when she eats all those dinners. Still laugh every time.
   – The Royle Family – Classic.
   – Nigella. She’s just so saucy in her black nightie scoffing food from her fridge with her plummy accent.
   – Bo’selecta. Now I might be dating myself here but who remembers that show. HILARITY!
   

I go back home soon and I am SOOOOO excited for a British Christmas.

So fellow Brits, what am I missing? What do you yearn for the most at Christmas? Other expats join in, what do you miss?

Love,

Jo xxx

P.s I’m holding out for a white Christmas in Wales this year!