The Grumpy Bugger’s Guide to a Cultural Christmas
The 12 Pages of Christmas
We thought our Christmas was crap? How about the rest?
On the first day of Christmas WNOL sent to me:
P.g 3. Christmas time around the globe is a touch weird. P.g 5. 5 Cheesy Christmas covers that we hate to love! P.g 6-8. The Christmas Celebrity Autobiography Craze
FIVE GOLD RINGS P.g 9. TV Chefs at Christmas – A Roast. P.g 10-12. Why Christmas sucks: A reflective piece
..And a Partridge in a Pear Tree
Bored of the same old yuletide traditions? Has the turkey dried your palette for the last time? Why not gain inspiration from the world’s weirdest traditions, on interesting ways to make December 25th less mundane. Livi Leonard
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h Christ, it’s that time of year again! Despite not even being December, Britains have already been inundated with Christmas advertising, offers and promotions, knowing all too well what to expect from the coming month. Its predictability forms a traditional, comforting, reminder for some. Perhaps for those hoping to return to home-cooked meals, followed by quaint wishbone breaking, Christmas is comforting thought. But for the Ebenezer’s of society, Christmas is simply another day. Traditions only become apparent when the annually scheduled 11:30 argument breaks out, when Christmas dinner prep gets underway. Or additionally in the not so climatic finish to the joyous tidings, when their father’s pass
out in front of The Great Escape at around 6 o’clock. Bah-humbug indeed! However what about the rest of the world? Lest we forget crazy European traditions. From tomato fights, to whacking each other around the head, with garlic flowers and plastic hammers at Saint John’s fest, they know how to celebrate. Come December 25th, what are they all doing? Its December 1st. Time to help decorate the bloody Christmas tree again and wrestle with those cheap fairy lights from B&Q. How do they even still work? Not forgetting the tacky nativity scene purchased by many parents, across the country, almost two decades ago now, because their little bundle of joy was learning about Christmas story. The Christmas story of course marks, the birth of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, the Lamb of God, born
in a stable, on Christmas day. Joined by the Angel Gabriel, the Three Wise Men and a defecating Barrack Obama. Sorry what? Although, defecation has never been a visible aspect of a nativity diorama in Britain, a Catalonian Christmas would be unrecognisable without the presence squatter taking a load off. Figurines of celebrity spin-offs, ‘dropping the kids off,’ are sold every year becoming a welcomed addition in any home. The figure or caganer, the official name, translated as ‘the defecator’, is thought to be a symbol good luck and happiness. So why not liven up your festive décor with a doo-doo dumping Prince Charles or brownie baking Hello Kitty? If that’s not your thing, why not swap your Christmas day stroll for some inline fun? Forget freezing your bollocks off walking to midnight-mass, do as Venezuelans do and rollerblade. In Caracas, rollerblades are a customary part of church travel over the festive season. Roads are cleared, allowing worshippers a safe path to early morning church services. Beginning worship and religious celebrations from December 16th, devout Venezuelans will attend every service, making rollerblading a convenient addition to their busy schedule. Avoiding A&E, why not remember those who aren’t able to pull the wishbone with you? It is a truth university acknowledged, that Christmas is of course a time for families. Although this time of unity can be pleasant reminder that you are not alone, this can sometimes be a painful reminder of who is missing from dinner room table. So why forget them? In Portugal of over the ‘Consoda,’ the traditional feast, extra places are set at the table for deceased relatives. How’s that for a reminder? •
5 movies we are fed up watching at Christmas time! By Maja Scepanovic
During the holidays we are bombarded by festive films on every channel. But we have seen some of them one too many times. Here are the ones we can’t stand anymore 5. How the grinch stole Christmas This movie evolves around a theory that what families want to see for Christmas is an eerie creature living in the mountains and stealing presents. The sweet little girl who gives him a shot to prove he has a good side is more of a device than a character we can bond with. Jim Carrey’s portrayal of the Grinch would have also been far more credible if he for once wouldn’t be hiding behind a mask. If make up tricks were employed and Grinch didn’t look as perverse, we could at least relate to Carrey as a hero of the story. The movie is just simply not the fun we know Carrey can perform. There’s no balance between showing him as mean grinch and creating sympathy for him. If you kids do understand the difference between fantasy and reality, they will find it funny. Content is appropriate for kids age 6 and above, but in a nutshell it’s not for scary children. •
5 Cheesy Christmas covers that we hate to love!
By Stephanie Traore
We all need to admit that we adore the commercial cheese that are Christmas songs. What would this season be without a tacky jingle to complete the festivities? Here are our favourite picks for this year
5. Mariah Carey – All I Want For Christmas Is You. Released in 1994, we hate to admit that this is the ultimate 90’s Christmas song. Mariah Carey’s wish to unwrap the one she love and yearns for is really a tear jerker. We secretly love walking through Oxford Street and hearing nostalgic bliss blasting from John Lewis and Debenhams. Us 90’s babies at WNOL will never get tired of listening this tune. But for all the singletons out there, don’t worry, you can definitely afford to care about the presents. •
4. Surviving Christmas This is simply not a well-rounded kids’ movie. Families should know that your children will be asking about weed, drinking and smoking and perhaps why were violent scenes of smacking a guy with a shovel in a supposedly cheerful, reuniting with your childhood’ movie. Its PG ratings are set for the age of 13, and we are presented with stale internet jokes of Valco’s son watching porn and manipulating girl’s glamour shots into pornography. Aside from your feelings for Ben Afflect and James Gandolfini, maybe out of fear of not having enough jokes, the producers have thrown in extra subplots which made the real plot muddled and the movie impossible to watch. •
4. Kylie Minogue – Santa Baby Santa baby, just slip a 1st grade under the tree… for me? This Aussie singer channels Betty Boop in this cheeky rendition, originally sung by Eartha Kitt in 1953. Eartha Kitt’s version has that old school charm, but we love Kylie’s oh-so-sweet cutesy pie version. It almost makes us want to dress up in Santa costumes and busk this song in Leicester Square. Yes, we are ashamed to admit that. No, we’re not sorry. •
3. Home alone This movie was bugging me ever since I was a child. The original and its sequences start something like this: ’Tickets-check. Luggagecheck. Child-ooops, I forgot that at home, it’s fine!’. And everybody seems to go along with it, while this kid left at home fights the criminals and in the end he pretends everything was just fine. Getting over this tiny detail and the fact it is a funny Christmas classic, Kevin inflicts some serious injuries to the burglars-from cuts to burns and also appears to be watching ’30s gangster movie that he has been forbidden from watching. Except from the facts of forgetting your child and then going through great struggles to find the same, the movie was remarkable for all of the 90s kids childhoods. But the truth is, the sequels with repetitive plot or forgetting your own kid were a bit too much. •
3. Destiny’s Child – 8 Days of Christmas This hip hop tune is so terribly awesome. It’s rare to get a Xmas tune you can bump to at the club. The sassiness in Beyoncé boasting how her baby gave her a Mercedes and Chloé shades makes us envious to say the least. And we think we’re being self-indulgent when we ask for an iPhone 6 plus or designer perfume. Thanks to this x tune, it definitely feels like Christmas at WNOL. •
2. Jack Frost What possessed anyone into an idea of making your dad return to life as a snowman? All we know is that snowman gives us the creeps. Nothing of a matter what was it like for his father to be dead, or why is he there, or is there heaven, or any credible stories to make this storyline work for anyone above the age of 3 has been employed. This kid is more concerned about using his dad in snowman’s body to defeat the school bullies in a snowball fight. Again, is this true representation of how kids deal with bullying today? The answer is no, and the possibility of given that kind of advice in this movie is diminished every time you hear father-son conversations. Nothing gives you the answers in this movie, as snowman decides to leave but then appears one more time as a human to say that he will be there for his son. This movie had potential to deal with big children’s issues like bullying or a loss of a parent, but instead has just provoked creeps. •
2. Wham! – Last Christmas We are very unapologetic about this choice, or shall we say classic. Sadly, we’ve all been through George Michael’s unfortunate love story. Last year, this track was the most listened to single on Spotify – we predict a similar pattern this year. This festive tune has been covered countless times by the likes of Cascada and more recently, Ariana Grande, but we think Wham!’s original is the most heartfelt. We hope this year that someone special keeps our hearts safe this year. •
1. Love, actually Today we love to hate movies packed with too many famous actors, but people’s beloved holiday classic is just another one in a row. In fact, critics eleven years ago, when the movie came out in 2003 slammed that the protagonist Hugh Grant was not in it enough. Famous actors are just thrown in with no reason on so many occasions. Grief-stricken Liam Neeson rings Emma Thompson, whose relationship was never explained to talk about his grief. Colin Firth’s stood up by his girlfriend, as she prefers having sex with his brother, but he meets a Portuguese girl who can’t speak a word of English, and it’s true love discovery. if you are watching this with your children, you might need to explain the sexist jokes by Hugh Grant, who takes his secretary as a sexual object but ends up madly in love with her. Love actually is actually unrealistic , as each character’s romance just flourishes as soon as they are courageous enough to say ‘I love you’. This movie is just beyond overrated, and 13-year-olds believing this is true romance, you will thank me one day. •
1. The Jackson 5 – Santa Claus is coming to town This song is in practically every cheesy Christmas film, including rom-com Fred Claus. We’re going way back to the 1970’s with this soulful rendition of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, originally sung by Tom Stacks in 1934. Michael Jackson was only 12 when this song was released, and his powerful high-pitched voice undeniably makes this tune. The Jackson bunch brought the funk back to Christmas.•
The Christmas Celebrity Autobiography Craze As Christmas autobiographies have become a holiday institution – the literature community weeps but reluctantly accepts, writes Chris Chandler
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t becomes inevitable as it creeps its way towards Christmas time, that the usual mad dash for presents becomes something of a startled panic. In these weakest of moments when you’ve completely forgotten about your estranged uncle Clive and are veering drastically towards the local Waterstones; the Autobiography section gleams with promises of scandal and Jordan’s confusing fifth instalment – give a thought to the creative literature that will remain unread this Christmas. In no way is this ragging on the whole autobiography scene, leafing through a page-by-page account of a washed up footballer’s various barneys with the manager or Katie Price’s heart wrenching accounts of bad life decision #23 is a wonderful time killer – especially on that holiday that you convinced yourself you were saving the book for. But this by-product of the celebrityobsessed culture that surrounds our little island nation has Lynda Bellingham, Robbie Keane, Graham Norton, Kevin Pietersen and Lena Dunham dominating the Sunday
Times bestseller list for this year. And with BoJo’s jingoistic account of the life of Winston Churchill and the shudderworthy ‘Mrs Brown’s A-Y of Everything’ padding out the rest of the top ten, the situation does seem a touch dire for the state of the festive literature. It has been suggested that it all started with, you guessed it, Billy Connolly. Okay, maybe he’s not quite the person you envisaged being at the
forefront of a sub-literary craze, but his biography penned by his wife and published in 2001 entitled “Billy – The Biography of Billy Connolly” sold over one million copies – so who are we to judge? But despite its wide praise from literary critics and general populace alike, the floodgates undoubtedly opened, leading to the several metric tonnes of titles that we have adorning our bookshops today. The key difference that arose quite
dramatically between Billy’s tales of growing up in bonnie Glasgae and his introduction into the comedy scene and the monsoon of derivatives that followed – was that the former was actually really well written. The slew of partially ghost-written, mostly brain-dumped ‘non-fiction’ that emerges from struggling C-listers and reality show lingerers is sold as being about real people, their real life stories and revelling in their rags-to-riches
story. But as The Guardian’s John Harris states – they all boil down to the same thing; “I was born ages ago and my mum and dad were nice but poor but then I got a lucky break and now I’m on TV and everything and here is a picture of me on our honeymoon in the Maldives.” There’s nothing ‘new’ or ‘real’ here, they all fade into the distance – chameleon themselves onto the white-washed walls of the format.
Maintaining a similar ebb-andflow, which errs just on the side of readable. It merely adds up to people’s insipid fascination in the vapid and the unattainable. The autobiography used to be an intriguing look back into the lives of the greatest in our cultural history, into great political and philosophical leaders, genre defining musicians and the fantastic writers of our times – not the tiny violin warranting accounts of another paint-by-numbers council-house to lakeside mansion affair. It’s almost too much to take knowing that the genre is single-handedly keeping the publishing industry alfoat – I don’t want to say it, but it seems like we need them. These publishers who take the whole-hearted smack to their integrity exist as some of the final guard against the eradication of independent, young novelists and the auto-sales bank roll that movement. The question that is really being posed here, it seems, is what has happened to the hunger that the English have had for a gripping work of fiction or something of real substance? During these colder months, curling up by the fire with a good book and that seasonal tipple that your louche old uncle is always good for is a Yuletide institution. The fascination with the escapism that the reading public maintains the celebrity autobiography brings pales in comparison to that of the sweeping character arcs and storylines of a truly engrossing novel. So this holiday season, when you’re in that high-street Waterstones, desperately searching for that last minute gift for Aunt Jeaneane – give that fiction section a go, she may well even learn some new words. •
6 Alternative Books for Christmas – Stop buying me autobiographies By Luke Barnard
TV Chefs at Christmas – A roast
By Charlie Staples
The Christmas season is fast approaching, you have an obscure family relation to buy a gift for, socks seem to impersonal, perfume is too expensive, so you settle your mind on a book. Just don’t buy an autobiography. We’ve all been brought one about an artist you mentioned once in passing and we never read them; they just become a collector of dust next to the student cooking guide you opened once for a less than successful spag-bol and the dictionary that was dragged out during a heated debate in scrabble. Here Is WNOL’s alternative choices to an autobiography that is sure to please •
Empire of Sin – G.Krist The title says it all, sex, drama, music and vice. Revered novelist, travel writer and Sue Kaufman Prize winner Gary Krist returns with his latest effort in his American travel series; and it reads like the carnivals and madi-gras that encompass it’s subject matter. Focusing on the legendary king of the infamous ‘Storyville’ red-light district, Tom Anderson, Empire of Sin delves into the internal struggle between The Big Easy’s desperate struggle for a good image, and it’s notorious criminal underbelly. •
Bad Feminist – R.Gay An interesting set of essays based on Feminism, Racism, Law and culture itself, Gay is rough, contradictory and honest through and raises doubts and questions we have all asked. Unlike the title suggests Gay’s views are libertarian and well poised for debate, a refreshing view on societies biggest issues and unspoken taboos. A good read for all those looking to expand their horizons. •
We Were Liars – E.Lockhart The latest from Emily Jenkin’s pseudonymous identity, E Lockhart promises a heart-string tearing account of the struggles of a broken family home. Told from the perspective of teenage female protagonist, Candice Sinclair, the eldest granddaughter from a family that never needs to mention money – private island holidays, an army of cleaners and cooks; the works. But ‘we were liars’ aims to show that family tragedies come from all walks of life. •
The Picture of Dorian Gray – O.Wilde
This is my favourite piece of written literature… ever. This is all I intend to tell you but will leave you with one question. Would you like to be eternally youthful? Oscar Wilde is renowned for poetic, sweeping metaphors that will delve you into the deepest depths of your imagination, a genius of the English language. •
All The Light We Cannot See – A.Doerr
A truly moving novel, all the light we cannot see is an emotional journey following the life of two children during the war. Ten years in the writing, Doerr’s masterpiece is emotive, funny, fill of soaring imagination and a fantastically crafted piece of literature, with themes covering disability, war asylum, self-discovery and morality. Flowing through France, Germany and Russia the settings cast you away to a time before your own but are so wonderfully tangible. A must read. •
Pyongyang – G.Delisle The rise of the graphic novel genre is something that most members of the public attribute to the successes of Japanese manga in the western world. Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang however, is a definite staple of the genre’s emergent popularisation – turning the tyrannical, totalitarian rule of communist North Korea into a more than palatable political comedy. An ideal way to introduce literature to the more visually inclined among us. •
You know how we love to spend our Christmas day? We like to watch chefs teach us how to cook turkey… because so much has changed in the world of turkey‑cooking since last year. Here’s how it goes:
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emember everything that we taught you last year about how to cook the perfect Christmas dinner? Of course you do – you watched the show, bought the DVD and read the book twice-over. Anyway… all of that is useless now. What you really wanna do for Christmas dinner this year is all in my new TV series, cook-along DVD and all the other tat I’m flogging (I promise that it’s not the same shit as last year). Like usual, I’ll carry on just assuming that you have access to a fully-prepped, state-of-the-art kitchen with a 36-hob cooker and double-treble decker uranium-powered oven like I do. Oh yeah, and don’t worry about washing up utensils, chopping boards, pots or pans, just grab brand new stuff from off-camera like I do. •
Now, let’s get cooking. Starter? We have two options: Prawn cocktail or prawn cocktail… there was never really going to be any contest on the matter: your mum likes it, your dad likes it, your nan’s not really sure what she likes anymore but it’ll definitely be on your plate come quarter to one – onto the main. Still roasting your potatoes in goose fat? What are you, a pilgrim!? This year we’re cooking them in gluten-free, trans-mono-polyester-expialidocious fats from Portuguese water buffalo – keep up, peasant. (Unrelated note: Check out our new range of cooking fats at Sainsburys) Oh yeah, you know that age-old, ancestral, universally-approved, traditional way of cooking turkey – that’s wrong. What you actually want •
to be doing is shoving a can of beer up its arse. Trust me. It’s fun for the whole family. Oh look, my pretentiously-named son who definitely hasn’t been forced into this part of the show has just-sohappened to walk into the kitchen – what an unrehearsed, unplanned surprise. May as well show you how much he likes daddy’s sprouts whilst he’s here. Wait – what’d’youmean the camera cut before he swallowed them? Don’t be silly, he loves them. By the way, did you notice how cute my kids are? My kids are cute. Cute kids. Yours suck. Mine are cute. Just look at them. Anyway, we’re hungry, let’s eat. Oh, yours isn’t going to be ready for another 4 hours? That’s fine, you can watch us pig out on the one we made earlier. Merry Christmas. •
Why Christmas sucks: A reflection A brief insight into the mind of a 20 something scrooge type character at Christmas time. Luke Barnard gives us a dose of festive cynicism.
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ach year the happiness of Christmas a’ flows through the streets with carolling, Christmas lights and the sweet sent of roasting chestnuts on the streets of London. Not forgetting the tacky blow up Santa’s, sky rocketing heating bills, presents for an Auntie you met once and loathe, cattle walks through shopping centres at all living hours and worst of all for me; being called a Scrooge for not loving this cold, dark, repetitive time of year. Yes, the 25th of December is fast approaching and here is why I hate the Christmas holidays. I work in a pub that has been advertising Christmas dinners since September, had Halloween decorations alongside a smiling Santa and has a grand total of six Christmas trees. This sickening sight is there to remind you that you will have to wander out after work to buy things you can’t afford, never get out of your overdraft and you best be pleased about it because hey, Christmas cheer right? Wrong. We as the British public can barely stand the sight of most attempts at adverts (ones that contain Meerkats are an exception) yet all of a sudden when it contains a gimpy penguin who’s sexually
frustrated or a anthropomorphic snowman in need of psychiatric care we all loose our god‑damn minds. I’m not a heartless cretin, and can appreciate its adorableness of a penguin, but for god’s sake we have ‘Planet Earth’ on the BBC, watch some Attenborough and just calm down. From Christmas themed socks to Thermos flasks, Christmas is plastered haphazardly onto every item in your house. Wiping your arse on reindeer themed toilet roll has never made you feel more Christmas cheer, only bested by the Christmas packaged ear swabs that just desperately needed a touch
of holiday spirit. Furthermore why wouldn’t you want to watch a plethora of rom-com Christmas films, which for the last 20 years have become your evening entertainment, each and every wintertime? The seventh watching of ‘Love, Actually’, which now you can reluctantly quote, is a Christmas must and brings the whole family together, to sit, in silence, watching fictional characters have a fairy-tale holiday. If the films depicted the truth about the weeks leading up to the fateful day, it would involve a lot of gin, late nights and early mornings; a mad dash for a toy that is only made in Trinidad and
has been sold out since last Christmas. But your child just ‘needs’ it or Santa will be seen as a heartless bastard and their dreams will be destroyed. And as for Christmas dinner, you queue up and pay a small mortgage for a turkey that for £60 you expect to be the lord of birds, the Adonis of Christmas feasts, and what turns up? A small, mal-nourished, pigeon that looks less appetising than the pigs in blankets that were two for one at Morrison’s. After cooking for 15 days straight, suffering from stress-induced alopecia and a mild stroke, you finally get the food to the table to look at your
creation. Pride swims across you, until, you realise that the entire table are piss drunk, half asleep and have already eaten their bodyweight in chocolate hanging from the tree. In addition to this the third day of turkey leftover sandwiches has reduced the entire house to a constipated mess and the empty alcohol cupboard is the final middle finger to this festive holiday. However although many aspects of Christmas drive me mad, its not all doom and gloom. The feeling of bringing your close family together, forgetting about the drudgery work and seeing the joy of your sons, daughters,
nieces and nephews celebrating Christmas is one you just can’t replace. Once you reach a certain age you have to accept that the festive season is no longer aimed at you, that the warm apprehensive feeling on Christmas eve whilst in bed is not longer the anticipation of gifts but the warmth of the mulled wine still yet to settle in your stomach. The cracked smiles and bags under your eyes all become worth it when you realise this hellish month have given a few people memories of happiness that will last a lifetime, so cheer up you grumpy buggers. Merry Christmas. •
The Mythos of Christmas Dinner: The art of getting through the day
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t the exact moment the finale firework fizzles from the night’s sky on the 5th of November, the mothers and girlfriends glance around, rub their hands together schemingly and murmur ‘Christmas…’. Christmas is a time that seems to transform the cynics into lull-eyed fuzzballs and the gooey ones into staunch Scrooges. Amongst the red and gold and green, Christmas forces us to show our true colours. For some it means a time of joy, giving and family, but for others it’s a time when family feud’s, saturated in alcohol, set alight and you have to lie to your grandmother that in fact you do like the kitsch soap she’s bought you three year’s running. Unsurprisingly, the food is no different. The clever marketing people in their swanky focus groups have nailed every consumer to the cross (oh wait, that’s Easter). It is the time of the year where gluttony champions over diets and not a single person can make you feel bad about it. Meat is usually the centerpiece to any dining table, but disappointingly the succulent and expensive corn-fed, organic-certified, lots-of-play-time Turkey has be skillfully transformed into compressed cotton wool, only to be rehydrated by caustic, muddy gravy. The issue with food at Christmas isn’t really about the food. If you don’t know the difference between a Maris Piper and a Vivaldi then really you’ve lost all hope. Some of you think I’m talking about classical music. The real issue is to do with expectation. You think that because its Christmas every must be perfect; the potatoes will have a golden crust and fluffy texture on the inside, that the veg won’t be overcooked, and that the faithful old red won’t run dry.
The fateful Yuletide day centres itself in a flourish of grandeur around the Christmas Dinner – Surely a highlight of a day of festive fun and frolicks. But it may it be time for something a little different writes Josh Pattinson Everybody knows that quirky family, the types that like to feel the earth between their toes and wind blowing through their daisy-chained hair. The family that subverts the expectation of Christmas dinner altogether. I have one friend who is going for a burger this Christmas – yes, a steaming beef burger – it’ll be a nice one mind, chuck mince cooked medium with chili jam and a brioche bun. But still, really, a burger? I have another friend who’s mum cooks them each their favorite food. So spaghetti bolognese, pizza and quesadillas are on the menu. They also describe everything as ‘magic’ and laugh outrageously at farting – it all sums it up really. Surviving Christmas day usually involves a juggling game, only if you drop the bowling pins chaos ensues.
Pretending to like presents that initially you thought belonged to someone else entirely is something that needs to be handled with tact. Try not making too much eye contact, but certainly don’t look away guiltily, the eyes of the present-giver are scrupulously analyzing every paralinguistic movement you make. So you reall have to make them count. The way I approach Christmas day is what I like to call ‘layering’. You start in the (early) morning with a chilled sherry, by 10am I’ve had two beers with a light breakfast, dinner is usually started an hour late at around 2pm by which time a Roman’s share of red wine has disappeared down my gullet. Dinner lasts three hours, more wine, desert, brandy, half an hour, cheese board, whisky, then lots more wine and 8pm cold meat sandwiches. •