In the spirit of this wondrous holiday season I’ve planned a series of posts concerning the lessons I’ve learned about British Christmas traditions, one per day for the next twelve days. Though many of our rituals and celebrations have sprung from a common place, I’ve found enough examples over the years to contend that, while the message is universal, Christmas doesn’t look exactly the same in the US as it does in the UK. Please enjoy my observations and, to my British readers, feel free to correct me if I’ve gotten the wrong end of the stick along the way.
When I was a kid, the yearly visit to Santa was an exciting yet daunting prospect. Sure you got to tell Old St. Nick what you wanted for Christmas first hand. But there was the whole sitting on a strange man’s lap stipulation. ( I didn’t like strange men much when I was young. I apparently didn’t like my Aunt Joan with the deep voice at that stage either.)
Santa held court in the midst of a winter wonderland of sorts in a chair that resembled a throne. He was most likely surrounded by elf helpers who took pictures and escorted you in and out of Santa’s presence. All the other parents and kids in line could see you and if you got overwhelmed and started to cry, your humiliation was very public indeed.
Actually the department store scene from A Christmas Story, while a bit exaggerated and cartoonish, wasn’t really that far off from how a shy young child might feel upon approaching the most beloved and feared man they can imagine.
On the other hand, British children must enter Santa’s Grotto, an enclosure decorated to resemble his abode or workshop at the North Pole. It doesn’t make talking to Father Christmas any less intimidating, but it does afford a degree of privacy when sharing your Christmas wishes with the big guy in red. That is unless talking to Santa makes you really nervous. Then privacy is not guaranteed and you’re busted in front of everyone in line.
And once the kids are older and jaded, Father Christmas has an entirely different set of issues to contend with. Not even Santa is safe from the cruelty of the Grotto.
Whether it’s out in the open or hidden away in something resembling a wedding reception tent, meeting Santa is usually a traumatizing event that parents have obviously blocked from their own childhood memories. Why else would generation after generation subject their offspring to this?
Terrified Child in Santa’s Grotto image credit The Daily Mail
Reblogged this on BRITRISH.COM and commented:
Great post I wanted to share!
When I was a child it was long queuing down corridors in what I think must have been some sort of department store in Manchester. Definitely privacy at the end of it, giving it a sense of gravitas, but the ones I see these days are in shopping centres and either are in a little house they’ve built, staffed by elf girls, or a specialist shop. This year there is an odd one that’s partly out in the open in that you can peer in on all sides as you go past.
Here Santa is often set up in the middle of a shopping mall with a throne type chair and elves who help direct the children to Santa and take pictures (for a fee of course). Something like this but a bit less scary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwGYfMVKQtQ
I did a post where you could see all my Santa pictures, but I cropped my brothers out, but here’s my best one. The rest were all very similar-looking tinsel rooms.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWRau-nWIAAxYp4.jpg:large
Love it! And no tears or desperate attempts to wriggle off Father Christmas’ lap!
If this is when I think it was then I would have been two. There is one from the year before, assuming I’m one in that and not 2-3 months, in which I am struggling. The only one of my Mum from the fifties she seems equally concerned.