Have a Very Classy Holiday Period!

Upwards moan about Christmas because they have reached 35-40 and now have several small children and they need to do the whole thing – decorations, tree, crib, family get-together, presents. And it’s all rather hard work. They do it, but they whinge the entire time. Also, how can you be original and special? A tree is a tree is a tree.

But they do it – like they get married in church and have hymns. It’s like saying “I’m grown up now and I’ve got to join the establishment".

I’m not going to join in the moan about Christmas starting too early (shops need a lead time to sell to us, and we need the time to buy the stuff), but I do resent being sold “Christmas” scented candles and – "mulled spice scented" thick bleach? “Christmas spice” scented loo paper?

The Times asked a few celebs what they avoided at Chrismas.

Stephen Bayley (head of the Design Museum): "Christmas is a spectacle of alarming excess and waste, although there are ways to avoid the kitsch.” He and his family have neither turkey nor tree. “We eat peasant feast food... minestrone or a cotechino with spicy lentils and mostarda”. (Cotechino is a kind of boiled salami, and “mostarda di frutta is a Northern Italian condiment made of candied fruit and a mustard-flavoured syrup”, says Wikipedia.) Lighting is “wobbly beeswax church candles bought in a Greek market”.

Kelly Hoppen (interior designer): “I can’t bear cinnamon sticks [as decoration] – they’re so naff – and those dried orange slices are the absolute worst.” Her favourite is “getting pine tree branches and putting them on the dining table” with some “big glass witches’ balls”.

Patrick Grant (designer) can’t stand not having turkey, and thinks the one-upmanship needs to stop.

Peter York (style guru) prefers food from Iceland, washed down with Kir Royale and Bayleys.

I’d love to serve Stephen Bayley peasant food – bubble and squeak (fried potato and cabbage), corned beef hash, lobscouse, Lancashire hot pot or stargazy pie (a Cornish dish made of baked pilchards, along with eggs and potatoes, covered with a pastry crust). Brexit cuisine! His menu will be banned once we leave the EU. I’m off round to Peter’s.

In the best possible taste

More here, and links to the rest.

Happy Holidays!

...I favour tacky Christmas decorations, the more Poundland the better, and like nothing more than framing a wall mirror with gold tinsel, the last word in naff, I’m told (the Savoy’s creative team decrees any tinsel a “no-no”...). Now I’ve bought an illuminated reindeer in rope-lights: just what our garden needs. It’ll set off my blue drip-effect icicle lights nicely, though even my daughter, aged 11, cringes that it looks like we’re attempting some “cheap Frozen theme”. Let’s just say my husband doesn’t share my penchant for house bling. Once he bought a pricey posh wreath and within 12 hours it had been stolen from the front door ... I’ve never turned my entire house into one of those pulsating light shows with a waving Santa on the roof (more’s the pity) but I’ve no problem with those who do. Quite the opposite. It shows generosity of spirit to give passing strangers a cheery boost at your own expense. And OK, there are eco-concerns but it’s only a few days a year unlike those shops which keep the lights on 24/7/365 for no reason. No, it’s snobbery that drives most grinches on this issue. As it happens I’m slightly disappointed with my reindeer: I’ve been far too subtle. I should have got a bigger one. I should have got three. This weekend I might risk domestic discord and buy a seven-footer. (Carol Midgley Times Dec 2015)


Upwards loathe “merry” Xmas, Xmas not Christmas – and “We’re not allowed to call it Christmas!”

They hate Black Friday – American import, and chavs buying chavvy things as usual. Materialism! They are embarrassed by Sun-style patriotism, and the idea of “loving your country” (especially when it means “brown people go home”). But they do love slagging off the Americans, whom they amusingly call “Merkins” or “Usanians”. They want to ban all Americanisms. How? 

What really galls the Upwards is all the MONEY people spend on Christmas – and now Halloween. Bang goes sixpence right and left – and nobody seems to care! But isn’t it good for the economy, or something?

Someone has suggested we rename it “Greedmas”. Upwards really don’t like to see common people buying things. And they still resent poor people having televisions. Does it all go back to the Puritans and Cromwell banning Christmas celebrations? (Apart from the interregnum, the festival was always a blow-out.)

Apparently the rich compete to invite bigger and bigger Xmas house parties (you have to have a house that fits 26, of course).


Wrapping paper – where did that go? Everybody uses gift bags now. How sensible is that?

Upwards have to wrestle their Xmas lights around the (large) tree (“I refuse to give in! I must have REAL lights!”) because they can’t buy an artificial one with lights built in. Caro’s mother is still attaching real candles to the branches, in Victorian tin clip-on candle holders. Such a shame Stow-Crat Hall burned to the ground on Boxing Day – but it was all insured, they carried the valuable contents onto the lawn, and they don’t have to worry about the roof any more.

This year, the Upwards have an Xmas tree made of recycled wood with traces of distressed paint, adorned with antique glass baubles. They do not hang evergreen wreaths (“garlands”) on their doors. They just might accept one made entirely of bare twigs. And no Xmas decorationss in the home before December. (Oliver Cromwell would have loved them.)

As usual, a vicar has told small children the story of St Nicholas and parents are up in arms, wailing: “They’ll stop believing in the tooth fairy next!” Upwards come up with 99 twisted reasons for lying to your children about Santa. It teaches them how to believe. It teaches them how to be skeptical. It gives them faith in a benevolent society – even though this is a myth. (Parents see the adult the child will be, and reasons for folk rituals always change over time.) And it’s “Father Christmas” not “Santa”.

Who buys that M&S Xmas food that’s all slightly wrong? Or do I mean “traditional with a twist”? Xmas pud with an apricot jam centre? Upwards have pudding, not Christmas cake. Chocolate logs with robins and holly are very Weybridge/Teale.

More here, and links to the rest.