Christmas - what is so special about turkey?

Well, I've been doing Christmas in England since 1989 and I still haven't worked out why the Brits seem to think turkey counts as festive food. Any suggestions?

Being Jewish, I have this in-built expectation that festive food would have some symbolic meaning. I also have an in-built expectation that we would sit around the table telling the story, singing songs about it, remembering what we're celebrating. Maybe one day I'll trying writing a Christmas haggadah...

It just feels so weird. What have all these customs got to do with the birth of the saviour of the world? A decorated tree, tinsel, holly, turkey and stuffing, Brussels sprouts and sausages... But the worst bit as far as I'm concerned is this utterly ridiculous business of pulling the crackers, reading out the awful jokes, putting on a silly paper hat, and trying to muster some enthusiasm about the plastic toy or novelty keyring or whatever it was that you were "lucky" enough to get in your cracker.

And then there's the exchanging of gifts, which is an art - due to the unwritten rule of not appearing to be greedy, you have to take your time and look quite nonchalant about the whole thing, as if you don't really mind if you don't get anything at all; but then, when you do unwrap one of your presents, you must suddenly switch to boundless joy and excitement or you will seem ungrateful.

Mind you, I didn't have to pretend to get excited by the thesaurus I was given yesterday - oops, I shouldn't have confessed, now that you know I own one I won't be able to get away with too much repetition of the same word...

Sunshine doesn't necessarily equal warmth

Even after all these years in England I'm still not used to this. You get up and look outside and see beautiful sunshine and blue skies. To me as an Israeli this means a hot day. But in England this can actually mean a freezing cold day, which is how it feels at the moment. Have looked it up on the web and it says 12 degrees (that's Centigrade/Celsius - I'm sorry, I don't speak Farenheit), which is fair enough for the end of October I suppose. I guess I'm a bit more used to it than I used to - I do remember the first time I came across this kind of day in London, went out in completely the wrong clothes and had to rush back in quickly to put something warmer on!

My wardrobe has certainly changed since living here. I'm sure I'd never owned a pair of gloves before. And I've had to get used to the fact that rain is something that happens often so you can't put things on hold until after the rain or you'd never get anywhere. If you live here you learn to put a raincoat on and take a brolley (yes, the Brits have a nickname for the umbrella - well, it does go everywhere with them) and go out anyway.

In my London days I used to go away to Wales now and again - found a little retreat house which became my regular bolthole. One of my visits was in winter, and I remember sitting in my room and thinking of going out for a walk. But it was raining, so I thought I'd wait a bit. Every once in a while I looked outside and saw it was still raining, until at some point the penny dropped and I said to myself: Come on, you're in Wales in December, what do you expect? Are you really going to wait till the rain stops?

So I put my coat on, took my brolley, and went out... and was rewarded with the most beautiful rainbow!!! Thank you, God. It was worth it!

P.S. Yes, I know I digressed here - I'm officially writing about living in England and here am I telling you about my visits to Wales. Maybe I should have called these postings "living in Britain". Hmmm...

The unwritten rules on telling jokes in England

I was sitting at a restaurant with my family on my visit home last year and I told a joke. My niece's reaction was: you look like you don't like this joke. And then I realised: I had learned to tell jokes the English way.

In Israel if you tell a joke, you start with saying: hey, this is really funny, wait till you hear this... and you're laughing whilst you tell it. In England that would not go down very well at all. In England the way to tell a joke is to keep a completely straight face, to pretend that what you're saying is not a joke at all, and leave it to your audience to work out that it's a joke. The best reaction is if they fall for it until the very end, and then you see this look on their face, you see them thinking about it, wondering, then coming to the conclusion that you weren't serious...

But of course the English are brought up not just learning how to tell a joke (deadpan, straight face) but also how to respond to a joke (deadpan, straight face). So don't expect them to roar with laughter. If you get a raised eyebrow and a half smile, you've done pretty well.

As for my niece's comment that I looked like I didn't like the joke I was telling - that's because it was what is called "a groaner". In Israel we call them bdichot keresh, keresh meaning a wooden board, but I've no idea why. But why here they're called groaners is pretty obvious, as the reaction you get from your audience is a groan, expressing the great suffering involved in hearing it. (Awful puns come under this category.) So when you're telling such jokes, the unwritten rules of English joke-telling say that you must look extremely apologetic whilst you tell them.

Thus we all play our part in the pretence that we don't really like these jokes, although of course if people didn't really like them they would have died out long ago (I mean the jokes, not the people). It's just that it's sort of beneath us to admit to liking groaners because they're not very sophisticated. That's my theory anyway.

So, have you heard the one about the frog? My pet frog is called Jumbo. Why Jumbo? Because he is not my newt.

Oh, and there's more... My pet newt is called Tiny. Why Tiny? Because he is my newt. Sorry...

What do the English mean when they say, "Pop round and see us at teatime"?

I read a book called Watching the English by Kate Fox, an anthropologist who has taken the unusual step of studying her own people. It's written in a very tongue-in-cheek and light-hearted way, which in itself is a very English thing to do - one of the things she explains in the book is the unwritten rule of not appearing to take yourself too seriously.

Reading this book I kept thinking they should hand copies of this book out at the airport - I could really have done with a manual upon arrival in this country, something to explain for instance what the English actually mean by the term "teatime", or even worse, by the word "tea"!

I remember my shock when I heard someone here talk about taking a burger home to give her son "for his tea" - I mean, what's a hamburger got to do with tea?

It turns out that some of the Brits refer to their main meal, eaten in the evening, as "tea". So if someone invites you to come round for tea, you need to find a polite and tactful way of making sure you know what they mean. Tea can be anything from the drink itself, the drink plus biscuits and/or cakes and/or sandwiches, to a proper cooked meal - the cooked meal may or may not include the drink - most homes I've been invited to for a meal have not served tea with the meal, but possibly afterwards; though I have seen Brits drinking tea with a meal in what is known here as a "greasy caff" (spelled cafe but pronounced caff), on which more another time, perhaps...

I think (though even after all these years I still haven't fathomed all there is to fathom about the Brits, so I may be wrong) when they say "teatime" they always mean the afternoon, so even if someone calls their evening meal "tea", when they invite you to "pop round at teatime" they don't mean "come for a meal". But "teatime" can vary greatly. I know people who have their afternoon tea at 3.30, others who have it at 5, and am quite sure that some regard 4pm as the sacrosanct teatime.

Traditional afternoon tea involves a teapot, and people have some very strong views on the precise process of preparing tea. It's important to warm the teapot by swishing some hot water inside it first; then you pour this water out, put tea leaves inside the teapot (or tea bags if you are a bit more modern in your outlook) and pour boiling water over it (apparently it must be boiling). It's also considered best to drink the tea out of bone china. Some people insist on cups and saucers, but I know perfectly respectable and traditionally-minded people who use bone china mugs. And of course the English do insist on polluting their tea with milk...

In my country we major more on coffee really, but I might write about coffee another time.