Hey everyone and welcome back to the Understandable English Podcast.
It has been a little while since I've made one of these, and winter has already arrived around the world.
Here in Moscow and Russia we already have a lot of snow.
I would be interested to hear what winter is like where you live.
Do you have a lot of snow?
Is it very cold?
Or maybe, like in the UK, it's not very cold most of winter.
So today, I'd like to talk about a topic which is of course very, very popular in winter in the UK.
And that is Christmas.
The Christmas holidays.
So what I'm going to be talking about is what we do on Christmas and how I am going to celebrate Christmas in Russia.
This year is kind of a special one for me.
It's the first Christmas I will ever celebrate outside of the UK.
On the one hand, it's kind of sad because I will not be able to spend Christmas with my family, with my parents, my grandparents, my sister.
But on the other hand, it gives me a chance to try and celebrate Christmas myself, with my friends and the people that I love around me.
Especially to even try and do this in a completely different country.
A country which doesn't celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December, in most cases.
Thankfully, this year in Russia, the 25th of December, of course, like everywhere else in the world, is on a Saturday.
Because usually, if it was in the middle of the week or on a working day, I would probably still have work to go to.
So, Christmas.
In the UK, Christmas is by far the biggest holiday of the year.
There is absolutely no competition to it.
Easter Halloween, all of these other holidays, even New Year's, are nowhere near as big or as important as Christmas.
Usually after Halloween.
So after the 31st of October, when November 1st starts, you start to hear about Christmas in the UK.
Maybe you hear some Christmas music.
Perhaps you see some Christmas TV advertisements or advertisements.
But most of all, you start to see Christmas decorations appear all around the town and the villages and people's houses.
Usually first people will put some Christmas lights on their house.
So outside they'll decorate it with lovely snowflakes and lights on the trees.
And it can be very beautiful in the dark nights.
Of course, they love Christmas trees.
Christmas trees.
My mum absolutely loves Christmas decorations.
In our house, every year, she puts up three Christmas trees.
One in the living room, one downstairs near the kitchen, and one in another living room too.
Even when I was a child, we used to have small little Christmas trees in our bedroom.
She also has lots of candles and decorations of Santa Claus, of winter themed tiny little miniature, so small village scenes.
So once the decorations are up and everyone is thinking about Christmas, usually on the 1st of December, all of the children get something which is called an advent calendar.
What this is, is it's a thin box which has lots of chocolates.
The chocolates are hidden behind small little doors.
On each day of December until the 25th, you open a small door and eat the chocolate, usually in the morning before school.
This helps the children to become excited coming up to Christmas and it really gets them thinking about Santa Claus, coming about, the holidays and of all the fun that they're going to have.
And, of course, on the final day of the Advent calendar.
There is usually a bigger piece of chocolate on the 25th of December.
As the Christmas holidays approach, people start to do things such as caroling.
What this is, is when people gather together and sing Christmas songs.
Sometimes they can be religious or non-religious.
It's a really great community event which brings people together to celebrate happiness, celebrate their health and time together with family, and also to get even more excited about Christmas.
Christmas markets are also extremely popular and I've seen many here in Russia too.
In the UK, we love Christmas markets and often they are very big.
Lots of stalls and entertainment for children, many different types of food and ornaments and decorations that you can buy.
I really adore Christmas markets.
They put me in such a good mood and really get me excited for the holidays.
So, Christmas has almost arrived.
It is the 24th of December, the day before Christmas, and we call this Christmas Eve.
So what do people usually do on Christmas Eve?
Unlike other cultures, such as in Germany or some other parts of Europe, Christmas Eve is not the most important day.
Christmas Eve is usually a time we spend with family or loved ones.
We get excited about Christmas the next day.
We perhaps start to prepare the Christmas dinner.
Maybe they order some food together or watch a Christmas movie to get in the mood.
In my family, we always ordered Chinese food on Christmas Eve.
So we had a takeaway.
So a takeaway food, which was Chinese.
Then we would watch a Christmas movie together in front of the fireplace.
Being nice and happy and full of food and ready for the next day.
We would all go to bed early and get a good, nice sleep.
During the night, parents will prepare the presents for the children from Santa Claus.
The children, before they go to bed, will often leave out some milk and some cookies for Santa Claus by the fireplace.
And they might even leave a carrot for the reindeer.
The reindeer is what Santa uses to drive his sleigh, the animals, reindeer.
In the morning, children often wake up very early.
They're very excited and they run downstairs to see if Santa has delivered their presents.
They will find that the cookies have been eaten and the milk has been drank.
And maybe even the carrot has had a bite taken out of it.
And, of course, to their surprise and excitement, they will see lots of presents that have been prepared for them.
In most cases, the children will open these presents in the morning with their parents and family there and start to look at all their toys and get excited and play with them.
After this, while the children are playing with their toys and excited, the parents will, of course, continue preparing the dinner and get everything ready for Christmas dinner.
In the afternoon we have traditional Christmas dinner with turkey vegetables, stuffing ham and all of those amazing things.
If you want to see what this looks like, Google UK traditional Christmas dinner and you'll see plenty of pictures.
When we gather around to eat this dinner, we pull Christmas crackers which are made of paper and inside there are toys and also jokes.
We then tell each other these jokes and begin to eat dinner.
After dinner and dessert and lots of time together and, in some families, alcohol.
Of course, everyone will gather to watch the Queen's Christmas Speech or Christmas Address.
This is when the Queen has a recorded message for the country about the difficulties of the year, how we've overcome them.
She'll often talk about the importance of love family, friendship and everything that we should be thankful for in our country.
After this, the day becomes a lot more relaxed.
So we spend time playing games with family, perhaps some board games.
We relax, maybe watch some movies, go for a walk, see some fireworks.
There are lots and lots of options.
The next day we have Boxing Day.
So after the busy Christmas day and time together, Boxing Day is a day to completely relax.
We just relax, eat lots of food sleep, play some more games and perhaps go for a little bit of Christmas shopping.
So on Boxing Day many of the shops will have very large sales on items and everyone can go and spend the money that they received on Christmas on some new gifts or items that they wanted, and it can be a really great and relaxing day.
In general, that is most of what we do on Christmas and in the Christmas period.
And I think you'll see that there are a lot of similarities between Christmas and New Years in Russia.
The key differences are that we eat our meal during the day.
So in the afternoon is the big celebration.
And it starts from the morning right through to the evening.
So we don't celebrate the night before.
We're at 12 o'clock.
Everyone is in their bed sleeping whenever it turns Christmas and we get up in the morning.
Of course, there are differences in food and lots of little tiny traditions.
And every family has their own Christmas traditions.
So what they do and what they love to do together.
And that's what makes Christmas special.
It's all about being with the people that you love, about sharing traditions and experiences and being reflective on what the year has brought us, about taking some quiet time together to enjoy our company, to not think about work.
The whole country is completely shut down.
Everyone is at home and quiet and it's a wonderful, wonderful time.
I hope that you enjoyed this episode of the Understandable English podcast and that you understand a little bit more about Christmas in the UK.
This year.
I'm going to be celebrating it in Russia with my friends and some people that I really love.
And I'm going to have a Christmas dinner, a traditional one relax, chill out and spend lots of time together.
And I'm really looking forward to it.
So I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a happy new year.
And I hope to have many more podcast episodes coming up very soon.
Goodbye.
