Tab Advent Calendar: 23 Days Til Xmas!

Coca cola adverts, presents under the tree, and a fat guy in a red suit: some things about Christmas never change.

However, each of us often have their own unique ways of celebrating the holidays. We asked members of the Tab team to share some of their families’ Christmas customs:

Ailsa Cameron, Debate Editor
Despite being freakishly tight-knit, our family’s nuclear set-up is almost pathological in its lack of traditions.
There are only really four of us at Christmas, as we seem to be unable to tolerate most of our remaining relatives – the last time we attempted to spend the day elsewhere, my grandparents, bless them, decided to eat Christmas dinner about two hours before we arrived, and stored our courses in tupperware boxes in the fridge.
On an even less festive note, my uncle phoned last Christmas Day to inform us that he and his wife had just shared a beetroot salad as their seasonal treat.
Shortly after, I opened my present from him: a mug with the caption ‘Don’t Say I Never Lift a Finger’, and a picture of a hand giving the drinker the middle finger.
Really, at our house, you must accept that the point is simply to stew in your own gluttony, make disparaging comments about the Queen’s Speech, and throw snowballs for the dog. And that is, to be honest, totally great.

Huxley Ogilvy, Features Editor
Our one main tradition is the Family Rap.
Let me explain. Every Christmas Eve each member of the family has to write a rap (usually insulting) about each of the other members.
Obviously none of us can really rap so the delivery can be terrible, but the material can be quite funny. ‘Dad is gay his hair is grey’ is a classic example.
We flesh it out with instrumentation too: my brother does the drums and my dad the piano. Needless to say none of it translates well when guests are over.
This is really our only tradition, the only other thing I can think of is we don’t tend to have turkey for lunch. Last few years we have had roast beef, cous-cous and even hamburgers!

Naomi Shimoda, Writer
Being Australian, it’s fair to say my Christmases are more than a little ‘unusual’ by the standard of you Brits.
Come Christmas, the temperature will often be over 35 degrees. Some families will go all out and follow the traditional English repertoire of having a full roast dinner, but many families will have seafood, like a lobster as their main dish. Or they’ll throw a couple of shrimps on the barbie, of course.
Christmas imagery is also wasted on us. Despite the ridiculously obvious differences in climate, northern hemisphere biased things like Christmas cards, decorations, Nightmare before Christmas and the like saturate the poor, confused minds of Australians.
This is why we all dream of a white Christmas, more so than any of our buddies up north. Not only do we want to boast to our friends that we actually touched real snow, we long for Christmas imagery to finally make sense.

Craig O’Callaghan, Chief Editor
Christmas traditions tend to evolve and change over time in our family. When we were younger, for instance, we would see the pantomime on Christmas Eve.
Now we save that money and spend it on alcohol and invite the neighbours over for drinks that night instead.
Rather than panto, me and my friends have spent the last five years going to Robin Ince’s Nine Carols And Lessons For Godless People.
Dubbed an ‘atheist celebration of Christmas’ the evening is packed with comedians, musicians and even scientists in one of the weirdest variety shows you’ll ever see.
One part Live At The Apollo, one part Royal Institute Christmas Lectures, these evenings have helped fill the panto-shaped hole in my Christmas calendar.
Instead of Widow Twankey, Buttons or Cinderella, I’ll be spending Christmas with Stewart Lee, Josie Long and Richard Herring. Not a bad upgrade to be honest!