There's no place like home for the holidays, except maybe Brighton

The Great European Adventure of January 2013 was scheduled to kick off early with a Devember visit to my aunt, her husband, their two-year old (my cousin and godson), and various other family members in Brighton, in the south of England. I’ve spent quite a lot of time in this city, enough that I can wander around alone and be fairly sure of myself in most things, and in a lot of ways it reminds me of home.  Last time I was there it was before I’d started university, and I must say that now that I have three semesters of my particular aggressively liberal college under my belt Brighton’s LGBTQ+, hippie, and hipster elements seem comparatively a lot less radical and progressive than they used to. I think I like this--Brighton itself hasn’t actually become any less radical or progressive, and it’s delightful to fly across the pond and arrive at a place where I know exactly how to be me. Brighton at Christmastime was yet, however, an unknown quantity.

I have very mixed feelings about Christmas. I always feel a bit like I’m taking advantage of the situation under false pretenses, because a) commercialization and b) I don’t really believe in the reason for the season. Usually I manage to eliminate this cognitive dissonance by filling my holiday with people I love and food and good spirit and cheer, and this year was no different. I also definitely had all these Dickensian expectations for my first English Christmas. No snow simply would not do. All men were to be wearing a top hat and tails, and everyone would be scurrying about on the street under gas lamps with brown paper parcels under their arms. Random hordes of carolers would present themselves at the stoop approximately every six seconds. In these regards, reality was a bit of a disappointment. But I got over it real fast. In my very limited experience, I believe the Brits know how to do Christmas right--even in a city so secular that the Jedi census phenomenon is a pretty big thing.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m one of those people who starts blasting Christmas music the second my stomach is empty of Thanksgiving dinner, and, never fear, that I will construct an appropriate blend of holiday songs for every situation. The music of the season is the core of the all-important communal aspect for me, the family and friend part of Christmas that I could never want to wish away. Based on every dreadfully stereotyped holiday movie I've ever seen (which is a lot) and also real life, English people are much bigger on hugging and “Happy Christmas”ing and generally sharing whatever happiness that is inside them than are Americans during the holidays. This built community of family members, of friends, of neighbors, fills my heart with unadulterated joy. On Christmas Eve, for example, the family all went over to a neighbor's house for a party, and all the neighborhood residents were gathered around the piano singing “Fairytale of New York” with no hint of this display of community being weird or forced. All these neighbors, whom I had just met, also exuberantly wished us all a Happy Christmas as we left. If this isn't in the spirit Christmas, I don't want to know what is.

Also, as much hate as British food gets, I have to note that when it comes to Christmas dinner traditions nothing should be said against it. There were about fifteen people at the extended family feast I was lucky to be invited to, and I do honestly believe a lovely time was had by all (a rare feat for family gatherings). Since I'm a vegetarian, these big holiday meat-centric meals are often not particularly exciting for me. In this case, though, I didn’t even notice that I wasn't eating the display piece of the meal because there were so much fantastic food, period. Brussels sprouts and multiple styles of potatoes--this is England, after all--and cranberry sauce and stuffing and so many other things. The meal was topped off by flaming figgy pudding, and a delightfully rousing rendition of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" as it was brought to the table. This flame was most impressively sustained for over a minute by dousing it with copious amounts of alcohol, and I regret that I have no photographic record of this event. (As a side note, I find it amusing that the traditional Christmas pudding for the English, among others, is basically a fruitcake, whereas in the States the fruitcake is the big joke. As such, I have never learned to love fruitcake--which made me a bit of a heathen in the eyes of my European family, leading me to hurriedly consume figgy pudding with hopefully suitable aplomb and enjoy the experience immensely.)

A big feature of what I like about England (and Europe in general) is how old everything is. I'm a history major, and I have this really bad tendency to romanticize ancient things, things that I think have had a life of their own. Beyond the beautiful communities, beyond the singing, and beyond the food, I think I'm probably rather in love with the idea of how traditional all this is, how people in this country have been doing roughly the same thing at this time of year for many centuries. For that, I shall make no apologies. And, even though I know this is probably not the point for most people, when it's the traditional love and happiness and community that is emphasized, and the religious elements are not so obvious, I am so, so, so down with Christmas.