I’ve been meaning to start noting down some of the differences I see between here & home (not things like driving on the other side of the road, or the fact that it rains more here – duh) but things I hadn’t known or think others might not know. I thought I’d start with Christmas.
- Santa Claus/Father Christmas doesn’t come from the North Pole in Canada. Father Christmas lives & works in Lapland, in northern Scandinavia.
- The robin (the European robin, not the North American one) is a symbol of Christmas. Ornaments and cards are covered in them.
- Major department stores compete to see whose TV Christmas commercials can make people cry the most. The whole country waits each year for the new ads.
- I’ve always wanted to try chipolatas – a little sausage that is ALWAYS served with turkey (I read about it in every Maeve Binchy or Joanna Trollope book, heard about it on every British TV show, and it’s mentioned in every UK cookery book). I imagined something exotic and spicy and looking like a little cocktail weenie, but it turns out they’re just small pork sausages. Very nice, but nothing revolutionary.
- This next one may just be Orkney and other rural communities: almost everything closes for at least a week: the library, garbage collection (mine is going back in the freezer, I guess), a couple of delivery companies.
- There is a tradition in Kirkwall called the ba’. The Ba’ is played on Christmas Day & New Year’s Day in the centre of town. Imagine a rugby scrum, but 20 times bigger. Over 300 men, some from Up-the-gates (Kirkwall) or Doon-the-gates (St Ola et al), try to move a ba’ (ball) from the Merkit Cross either down to the harbour or up past one of the churches. It was announced Dec 1 that the Ba’ would happen this year. It was promptly cancelled 11 days later.
- Snack foods – Tesco has come out with a series of interesting munchies: ‘Festive Crisps’ including sausage roll or, better still, turkey & stuffing flavoured puffs, and crisps flavoured like pigs in blankets or . . . . wait for it . . . . candy canes. I’ve got proof.
