Good Morning 2010 - Nice to See You!

I've survived my first holiday season in England! There were a few notable differences between this year's holiday fun and what I normally experience at home in California:

1. Opening crackers (not the Saltine variety, but the strange parcels that nobody loves and everyone buys for the Christmas dinner table) and wearing paper crowns during our Christmas meal. For you Americans out there, a "cracker" is a small Christmas parcel containing a paper crown, a joke and a small, cheap trinket (like a dice or nail clippers) which is tied at both ends like a Tootsie Roll, and it opened by two people simultaneously pulling on either end of the parcel--whoever ends up with the largest section of the cracker wins the goods inside. Someone asked me why this long-standing English tradition didn't make it over to America with the Pilgrims, and I have a feeling it's got something to do with the whole "crown = king" thing, which the early Americans weren't too keen on. Just a guess....

2. Snow in the backyard instead of palm trees. On December mornings in L.A. I used to wear my Ugg boots occasionally to walk the dog because they were easy to slip on and marked the trend started by celebs a few years ago. I've had the same pair of Uggs since I was 18 years old, and until this year they still looked brand new because I rarely wore them. Now I wear them everywhere--to the movies, to the mall, to the gym, to dinner at a local restaurant--and they are practically falling apart. The snow and cold weather really added a special element to the Christmas Day atmosphere, but my feet have not actually been warm since September.

3. An extra national holiday for Boxing Day on which there is neither a boxing match, nor the boxing up of any particular items. I have yet to find an English citizen who can give me a clear explanation of why December 26th is a holiday and how it came into being. Not that I'm complaining about the additional day off, but think about it--shouldn't we just be honest with ourselves and call it Shopping Day (as a nod to the post-Christmas sales which create an even bigger consumption frenzy than Christmas itself), or Sleeping-It-Off Day (an indication of what everyone who's not hitting the sales is doing after the Christmas dinner food and alcohol binge)?

It's not the first time I have spent Christmas away from my family, but it is the first time in many years that I didn't do any travelling over the holiday period. During the past 5 years I have spent the holidays driving down Mexico's Baja Peninsula, roaming the jungles of Costa Rica, lying on the beach in Cabo San Lucas (Mexico), skiing fresh powder in Idaho, and trekking in Nepal & India. I do miss the excitement that travel brings, and the escape from all the holiday nostalgia and/or inevitable family drama, but this year there were no bags to pack, planes to catch, freeways to navigate, or airports to run through, and I have to say that on the whole this made the experience MUCH more relaxing.

Happy New Year! Here's to all that 2010 has in store!

Birmingham's Frankfurt Christmas Market

Beer, sausage, cheese & chocolates. The Germans sure chose a fine selection of foods to become internationally known for! D and I made a visit to Birmingham's Frankfurt Christmas Market in the city center one night last week with some friends and felt obliged to pay homage to German culture by taking part in some of the hearty eating and drinking that was going on.

With over 2 million visitors a year, the market is the largest authentic German Christmas market outside of Germany or Austria, and apparently Frankfurt is Birmingham's "partner city" under some EU sister city program. The market here opened mid-November in Victoria Square and runs until December 23rd (although I have heard rumors that the city council are considering leaving it open until February, since it has brought so much life to the central business district). It's open all day, from 10am to 9pm, which has allowed me to nip over during my afternoon holiday shopping outings for a mug of mulled cider or a hot Bratwurst sandwich.

The shops are found in cute little timber huts which have been erected around Victoria Square and down part of New Street, all covered in pine boughs and holly. About 1/2 of the stalls are food oriented, selling roasted nuts, marzipan loafs, chocolate treats, hard candies, soft pretzels, Germans sausages, German breads, and of course beer, mulled cider and mulled wine (Gluhwein). The remaining stalls sell mostly craft-work or handmade gifts, including ceramics, candles, glasswork, jewellery and Christmas decorations. A number of stalls also feature traditional German items such as wooden toys, nativity scenes and marionettes.

I found out that the origins of the Christmas Market in Frankfurt can be traced back to 1393. In Medieval times, Frankfurt originally apparently held the Christmas Market exclusively for the burghers (members of the governing class), while the city craftsmen reserved their finest wares for local people.

Most of the crafts for sale aren't really my cup of tea, but there's definitely some fine handiwork on display. I really enjoyed seeing people out during their lunch hours having mugs of beer and hot cocoa, watching children from some of the local schools sing Christmas carols up on the small stage near the top of Victoria Square. In the evenings workers crowd around the beer stalls drinking in groups and avoiding their holiday to-do lists. It feels altogether cheerful considering the weather and the economic climate that would otherwise be dampening spirits at this time of year. As the German's say: Froehliche Weihnachten!!

Christmas Tree Shopping!

Cut, potted or stands? These options aren't normally associated with Christmas tree shopping in California, so I was a little bit confused about all the options I kept reading about on the local tree farms' websites in Birmingham.

Normally, the only decision our family ever made when picking out a tree was what height the tree should be--type of tree wasn't even an option. I think my mom always had a preference for Noble Firs, so that's what we had, and it became our family tradition. We always headed straight for the Noble Fir section of the tree lot and if they had a meager selection of acceptable (read 'full') trees, we moved on to the next lot a few minutes drive away.

Typically, the trees I encountered in California's lots were pre-cut, with a wooden "X" nailed to the bottom, and were displayed standing in neat lines like soldiers waiting for inspection. No excessive handling of the trees was required--we simply strolled down the rows of trees to see which trees were the right height and fullness.

This afternoon D and I drove over to Wood Farm's Christmas Tree Farm, near Shirley, to pick out a Christmas tree for the house. There don't appear to be too many large Christmas tree lots around our neck of town (or generally in the city), so we are lucky that this place is only about 5 minutes from our house. Upon arriving at the tree farm; however, I soon realized this may not be as easy an experience as I was used to.

First, there was a choice between cut, potted or stand trees. The "cut" trees were most like the regular American trees, but instead of having an "X" base on them so they could stand up freely on their own, they were lying all over the place, ungrouped by height at all--some were lying on the ground in loose stacks, some were leaned against fences several trees deep, and others were in small metal stands over a foot off the ground, so the trees' true height wasn't discernible until you removed it from the stand. These 'cut' trees were difficult to evaluate because so many of the trees were hidden behind or beneath the stacks, and getting to them was such an effort.

We went inside to check out the other tree options, and discovered that you could also buy a 'potted' tree with it's roots potted inside the soil of a bright red bucket, or a 'stand' tree, with the roots all showing, that you screw into a special stand and allow the roots to spread out inside the bowl. Apparently, you can attempt to replant either of these tree types in your own garden after the holidays, but the tree farm won't guarantee that the tree will survive. Although this was an attractive 'eco' option, we don't have any space in our garden for another large tree and the trees weren't grouped by type or height or price inside, so we kept wandering and wandering without being able to hone in on the type we wanted.

We ultimately wandered back outside and (to D's relief) I finally settled on a 6 foot, cut Noble Fir and a cheap stand. It needed some trimming down with the clippers at home, because it's really full, but we figured too full was better than too sparse! Now for the decorating....