Rozhovor s Britem Jamesem, který je doslova "Christmas expert". Má doma přes 330 hudebních alb s koledami a o Vánocích mluvil i v BBC. Proč si doma věšíme jmelí, dáváme dárky a kdy bylo posláno vůbec první vánoční přání? Poslechněte si mezi desátou a jedenáctou porcí bramborového salátu.
Rozhovor s Britem Jamesem, který je doslova "Christmas expert". Má doma přes 330 hudebních alb s koledami a o Vánocích mluvil i v BBC. Proč si doma věšíme jmelí, dáváme dárky a kdy bylo posláno vůbec první vánoční přání? Poslechněte si mezi desátou a jedenáctou porcí bramborového salátu.
Welcome to the podcast of English with Kudrunato Holko. My name is Pavlina and every week I will talk to my parents from all over the English language world about different interesting topics. I would also like to mention one thing If you really want to practice your English and learn it, on my page on Patreon, patreoncom or Kudrunato Holko, you will find a complete list of the following conversations, with meanings, phrases and everything else that is worth knowing. And that's all from me. Thank you very much for watching this channel and we can start. Hello James, how are you today?
Speaker 2:Hello Pavlina, thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1:No, thank you, it's a pleasure. So, as I said, you are a Christmas expert, so you probably know everything there is to know about Christmas. Am I right in thinking that?
Speaker 2:I know a lot about Christmas, yeah.
Speaker 1:And well, I also have to say that you've been a guest on the BBC and other major media where you talked about Christmas. So how did this whole thing start for you? Because in the normal life, you are a web designer and also a developer.
Speaker 2:Yes, it started 20 years ago. This year I started I run a big website called YChristmascom and 20 years ago I was just starting to get into web design because sort of the web was still quite a young thing back then and I had some friends who were primary school teachers, elementary school teachers, and they came to me and they said why can't we find a site with lots of information about Christmas that we can use with our children in our classrooms that isn't trying to sell them something? Because back then sort of any children's sites were made by the likes of Disney and they might have had some information on there but they were really trying to sell their things. So me, being a big kid back then and still now, and loving Christmas, I thought it would be really fun to make a little site for a school and find out a bit more about Christmas. So that's what I did and 20 years later it now takes up most of my December.
Speaker 1:I mean, your site is absolutely fabulous, so everyone should go and check it. So when you hear the word Christmas, what's the first thing that pops into your head?
Speaker 2:Lots and lots and lots of things Music, the lights running my site, random information that lots of people don't know, all sorts of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, there's probably a lot of information that you have to give people at this time of the year, and thank you so much actually for sitting down with us today, because you're also going to tell us a lot of information today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love sharing anything about Christmas.
Speaker 1:Well, that's great to hear. So we probably all know about the birth of Jesus, but would you be able to sum up briefly when and why the celebration of Christmas?
Speaker 2:again. I will try to. It's a bit complicated and no one really knows. To be honest, people had had mid-winter festivals around late December what we now call December for the winter solstice, when it's the longest day of the year sorry, the longest night of the year and the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere and the other way around in the southern hemisphere. And people sort of had a party at that point because you couldn't do much work in farms because the ground was really cold and you know the sun was beginning to shine a bit brighter and they knew that spring would come. So they had a bit of a party and just to sort of see them through the rest of the winter that was to come.
Speaker 2:The Romans had a festival called Saturnalia in late December that ran into their New Year's festivals, and the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, which is the Jewish festival of lights, happens around late November into December, because their calendar is based on the moon rather than a fixed time, so that moves around a bit and so there were lots of parties sort of happening around this time of year. And then some people said that sort of Christians stole the pagan mid-winter festivals and turned it into Christmas. But that might not be true, because there's also lots of evidence from very early on that Christians were also celebrating the birth of Jesus in this time of year. But how they got there is a bit odd. Back in Jewish history, they thought that you were born or conceived on the same day that you died, and some early monks worked out that Jesus died on the 25th of March, and so they also then started celebrating his conception on the 25th of March. And if you add nine months on to the 25th of March, you get the 25th of December.
Speaker 1:Super interesting and wow. And so why do we celebrate Advent and light a candle for Sundays in a row, just before Christmas?
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, advent is the time coming up to Christmas, and Advent in Latin means coming, and we know that the first records of Advent go back to about 500 AD, so again very early on, when Christians used that time to prepare themselves spiritually coming up to Christmas. And still many Christians, especially Catholics and Orthodox Christians, fast during Advent. Some will have very, very minimal diet, some will just cut out meat or dairy or something like that, and they go to special services and the candles, because there are four Sundays in Advent. Advent is calculated by four Sundays before Christmas, so it can move around a bit as well, depending on what day of the week the 25th of December comes on. So the candles are lit in the run up to Christmas to sort of say, hey, christmas is coming and that's a good thing.
Speaker 1:And so why do we give each other presents? And is that so in all countries where Christmas is being celebrated?
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, presents were also part of some of the midwinter festivals. The Romans used to give each other pine branches during their new year festivals, which is a bit odd, but it's thought that I mean, lots of greenery was brought into the house during the midwinter festivals. One because it sort of brightened the house up sort of, and people were reminded that there are some plants that survive the winter, so so can we. But also some recent studies have found that things like pine branches and some of the resins that come out of these things might have kept insects away, which would be a good thing to have in the house over the winter when everybody's indoors, so it might have kept the insects down a bit.
Speaker 2:But going back to presents, so of course Jesus had the presence from the wise men, so that's another reason that we have Presence given at Christmas. It was a way of showing charity and yeah, it's it's done in most places around the world, especially in the West. I think it's more aware. Christmas is more of a commercial thing now, not so much of a religious thing, the sort of the presence of taken over, sort of, from the religious side, and it's sort of the more presents the better. But yeah, generally, wherever there's Christmas, there's some sort of gift exchange.
Speaker 1:And well, now that you spoke about a greenery, is there any connection with the mistletoe that we hang in our houses?
Speaker 2:Yeah, missile missile toes. Interesting Missile toe again goes back to a midwinter type of thing where in ancient history it was a Used as a sign of peace and to it was meant to ward off evil spirits for some reason I don't know why, but they thought it did, possibly because it was one of those things that hung around in the trees all year it is. It actually grows on other trees. It doesn't have roots of its own. It sort of buries itself into trees and then grows. The kiss, the practice of kissing under the missile toe actually seems to come from the UK and it only seems to date from the late 1700s. That's the earliest record of kissing under the missile toe.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it seems to have been sort of a thing that the Georgians had In the UK. It was sort of a bit of a party and they bought it in and then the condition happened that you have to Pick a berry off every time someone's kissed under the missile toe. Once all the berries are gone, there's no more kissing. So you needed to make sure that you got a bunch that had lots of berries on it Absolutely, and why do we send each other Christmas cards?
Speaker 2:Well, that's another good British invention. So so cards, yes, well, the first card as we might vaguely think of a card and was sent in 1611 To the King of England in Scotland. But it wasn't that much like a card in that it was about 85 centimeters long and about 60 centimeters and it was probably actually a scroll and it just had some Christmas greetings written on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how was the scent?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it was probably taken in person and presented at the Christmas feast on a horse. Yeah, yeah, cards that we think of them today, that you actually sent through the post first started in 1843 by a man called Sir Henry Cole who had helped set up the British post office. That was just starting back then and he wanted a way of getting more people to use the post office and they just introduced a cheaper stamp so more people could have thought to send things through the post. So he had an artist friend who he got to design the first Christmas card and they were more like postcards and they had the design on the front and then you wrote a message on the back so he sent his first ones out for to a few friends and then More people picked up on the idea and printing became cheaper and the postage became cheaper, and so that's sort of when it happened. And then it spread over into Europe and especially in Germany. It was picked up and then it went over to America and then we have lots of Christmas cards.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what an extraordinary businessman he was.
Speaker 2:Yes, and he also helped to set up the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He was really quite a influential person.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow. And what is the meaning of the Christmas colors? Usually I would say red, green, gold and white, or would you? Would you say there is anything?
Speaker 2:else I would think that they're the main ones. Yeah, I mean green again comes from Holly and Ivy and mistletoe and trees that you know there's still things that are out this time of year. The red comes from the Holly berries. The very first sort of Christmas trees that were had in the UK were called paradise trees and they were part of medieval Plays that were put on in the streets because not many people could read, so they had plays to tell Bible stories and the paradise trees Represented the tree in the Garden of Eden so and they were sort of wooden pyramids that were painted green or had greenery stuck to them and then they hung apples on them. So red, obviously, red apples.
Speaker 2:So that was another one that came across, and, of course, st Nicholas's red bishops robes and who became Santa. So that's where the green and red come, and golds, the, the color of the Sun and of light and of fire, which was associated with mid-winter festivals, and also it's a gift that Jesus got from one of the wise men White snow. As you're out in Sweden, you know snow.
Speaker 1:We're expecting it. There's just rain now. So Well, and now that you mentioned Santa, so why? Who is he? And why are children made to believe that he is real?
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, santa was first st Nicholas.
Speaker 2:He was a bishop in the late two hundreds and early three hundreds ad In the country that is now turkey.
Speaker 2:He was an orphan but came from sort of a fairly wealthy background and he became a priest and then a bishop and he had a reputation for being very generous.
Speaker 2:And one of the stories about him is that in the village that he lived in there was a family that had three daughters, but they were very poor and couldn't afford a dowry, so the daughters couldn't get married.
Speaker 2:So, secretly, one night, st Nicholas is meant to have either dropped down Some gold down the chimney or through the window, and it either went into the shoe or the stocking that was hanging up to dry. So, and that was a mysterious, wonderful gift, and so he did it for the second daughter and then, by the third daughter came of age, the father was getting a bit suspicious, so he hung around at night and then spotted st Nicholas doing it, and then his fame for generosity and giving gifts spread through Europe, and so that was st Nicholas, and in which you're causing, in the Czech is he's um, uh, so they're middle us, and then you've got in when he got to the Netherlands and Belgium. St Nicholas became a center class and then Dutch and Belgium and German people took the stories of center class over to America and his name got changed from center class to Santa Claus.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, oh wow. And well, how come there is Santa in the UK or in the US, then we have a G check in the Czech Republic, then we have Tom, then in Sweden, etc, etc, etc, yeah and well, you see, check is comes from Germany originally. Oh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're in in the when the Reformation happened in the 1500s and saints sort of fell out of favor. So st Nicholas bringing you a gift and wasn't so good. So Martin Luther Invented the Chris Kindle, which was the Christ child and, yes, I can came out of that. It's the Moved over the border and you'll find it all around in bits of Eastern Europe. It's the Christ child, but it's also depicted as a little angel, sometimes as well, rather than the baby Jesus. So it's a bit weird. And I've been. I've been Sweden. Yeah, you have the Tomty and the Nisse, who are the elves and the little gnomes. In some parts of Italy you have Bofana, who's a witch who brings your presence.
Speaker 1:That's scary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's a nice witch, but she's a witch. In Russia when the Communists were in power, they did, and lots of Eastern European countries when the Communists were in power, they did, course, did away with Christianity. So they bought in grandfather frost or dead morats as their sort of Santa replacement. Old man winter and in the UK we still have Father Christmas is associated with Santa as well and Father Christmas was sort of the old man winter figure as well who got blended with St Nicholas.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, lots of gift givers all around the world, absolutely and well, can you think of a country that has the most bizarre Christmas tradition?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there are quite a few. I like the Swedish one of watching Donald Duck on Christmas afternoon, christmas evening afternoon.
Speaker 1:That's a good one. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:In Catalonia in Spain, they have a decoration called the pooping log. I know about that one. It's so funny and I made I tried. I'm because I'm with my. I have sort of a collection of decorations from around the world and I've been trying to get my hands on a real pooping log for years, but you just can't get them over here. So I made one this year. I got a log and stuck some googly eyes on it and things.
Speaker 1:And so how does it really work? So is it just a decoration, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a log of wood that's got a smiley face on the front of it and it wears a red hat and it has a blanket or a towel or something over its bottom and then during December, from the 8th of December, it's sort of fed sweets and goodies and nice things to eat, and then on Christmas Eve you're going to sing it a song and perhaps hit it with a stick of it being naughty, and then it poops out all of the gifts, all the goodies that you can eat over Christmas, and then when either some garlic or an onion comes out, that means that it's stopped giving out its goodies.
Speaker 1:Okay, and what is your favorite Christmas tradition?
Speaker 2:I like Christmas crackers. I don't do you have. Do you have crackers? You all know crackers from being over here at Exeter.
Speaker 1:Yes, but I we don't have those in the Czech Republic.
Speaker 2:No again, they're a British thing and they started about the same time as Christmas cards. Over here I will try and explain. Christmas crackers they are tubes that are about 10 centimeters long and then you've got other bits at either end that pop out, and then you, you pull each. Each person holds an end. They're sort of in three sections, so you've got the middle section and then bits at either end that people hold, and at the Christmas dinner table two people pull on each end and they go bang. And then in the middle you have a very bad joke a paper hat crown that you have to wear while you're eating your Christmas dinner and look really daft. And then there's some little present in it as well.
Speaker 2:They started from a, a sweet seller in the UK called Tom Smith. He wanted a different way of selling his sweets and he'd been over to France and seen how they wrapped them with sort of frilly ends, so he thought that was quite a good idea. So he first sort of started doing some designs like that, and then the legend goes that one evening he was sitting by his log fire and it went crack and he thought all that would be exciting if we could put that in the sweets when you open them. To make them a bit more exciting. They were actually first called bangs of expectation.
Speaker 1:And do you actually have to say the word bang when you? No, because it goes crack when you pull them. Okay, okay, so you don't have to scream it out loud.
Speaker 2:No, no, no.
Speaker 1:Okay, and so how does the Christmas day look like in the UK? Because you opened a presents on the 25th right.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, we're one of the few countries in Europe that does. Most of the rest of Europe celebrates the big Christmas meal and opening presents on the 24th. Yeah, but it really comes from the 25th because when Sorry, you might have to edit that out. That was my postman.
Speaker 1:No problem at all.
Speaker 2:The UK celebrating Christmas on the 25th of December comes from when King Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church in the 1500s and set up the Church of England and wanted to be different. So one of those things of being different was having it on Christmas day rather than on Christmas Eve. Yeah, so over here, christmas Day is the big day. Some people will go to church on Christmas morning. There are more services on Christmas morning rather than midnight ones. Many churches will have midnight ones, but if you're going to church, more people will go to church on Christmas Day morning, and I'm a Christian so that's what I do. And then generally people go to friends and family's houses. The meal is the big Christmas meal is normally eaten either sort of around one, two o'clock on Christmas Day. It's either because we also have the Queen's Christmas message that is shown on the telly at 3pm on Christmas Day afternoon. So the meal the big Christmas meal is either generally eaten before that or after that.
Speaker 1:You want to be ready for it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's sort of so. If you've had it beforehand, then you watch the Queen and then you fall asleep in front of a film or something like that. Or you have the meal after the Christmas message and then you fall asleep in the evening, because we also have Boxing Day as well, which is the day after Christmas, the 26th.
Speaker 1:And so what do you, now that you've talked about the food? So what do you usually eat for lunch? Or dinner, I don't know how to call it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, christmas dinner is normally called, although it's normally eaten at lunch. We have turkey. It's the big Christmas meal over here. It used to, back in history, it was beef if you were rich enough to afford meat back in the Middle Ages times. But since sort of the I would say it's really only the 1940s, 1950s really that turkey has been the must have Christmas dinner. And, yeah, turkey. The custom of turkey is a bit odd because turkeys don't come from Turkey.
Speaker 1:Oh, it took me a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the Latin name for turkey is a mixture of Latin and Greek and it means guinea, fowl, chicken, peacock, and turkeys aren't any of those four birds either. So they actually come from the Americas, but they're called turkeys because they came into Europe via the Spanish, into Spain and then into the Netherlands, but often via Turkish traders. So they were called turkey birds because they came from Turkish traders. But lots of other countries in Europe don't call them turkeys. In French they're called Indian birds, and also in Russia and Poland it also means the Indian bird. So yeah, it's all rather confusing. We like roast turkey over here and then Christmas pudding.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's very interesting, though, and what was the best present you've ever been given as a Christmas gift?
Speaker 2:I remember one year I got a bike and I couldn't work out how far the Christmas had got it in through the chimney.
Speaker 1:And how old was it? When was that?
Speaker 2:I hope it wasn't last year, no no, no, that was when I was about seven or eight, I think.
Speaker 1:And what was the worst Christmas gift?
Speaker 2:Okay, well, for a few years my family, for a joke, did the most useless present that you can find for a pound or less. So you really had to really think about that. One year my dad got me a pot for my false teeth, and I don't have any, so oh God, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:What's your favourite Christmas film and Christmas song?
Speaker 2:Okay, Christmas film. The Muppet Christmas Carol is just the best version of the Christmas Carol and you got to love them up it. Christmas song, that's a tricky one. I've got over 330 Christmas albums in my collection. That's a lot. Yeah, it probably would have to be a Carol, and I really like In the Bleak Midwinter, which was. It's a poem written by Christina Rosetti in the 1800s and then a tune was put to it a bit later on. So that's, yeah, it's a really beautiful Carol. I like that one.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's nice. And why do you think some people hate Christmas?
Speaker 2:I think it's because there's there seems to be a lot of commercial pressure on Christmas and also sort of that. You that Christmas has to be perfect and it has to be, you know, the best time of the year and there's just a lot of pressure around Christmas. I think I mean, I love Christmas a lot more than the average person, but I actually try to stay away from the commercial side of it. Like, one of the deliberate things on my site is that it doesn't have adverts on it, and I've been offered lots of money over the years from big companies to have adverts and I always say no because I just try and share the joy of Christmas, which, as a Christian, is about the coming of Jesus and the hope that he brings so to me.
Speaker 2:I want to get away from the commercial side and the pressures of Christmas and just have it as a time that hopefully you can spend it with friends and family, although this year is a bit weird with everything that's happening. Yeah, just take it as a time possibly to slow down and to think about the coming year ahead, which is what it was through history, really, because you can go out and farm or anything. So it was a time when people just came together to spend time and think about what was going to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, thank you so much. That's a beautiful approach and very unique too, so it's great. And why do you think that we should love Christmas?
Speaker 2:As I said, yeah, because it's a time of hope, it's a time of looking forward, it's a time celebrating the birth of a baby, and that's always a good thing. Even though Jesus was probably born in late October or early November, we still celebrate it in late December. So, yeah, it's a time of hope and of light and of just try to be nice to people.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well. Thank you so much, james. This has been absolutely great.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1:And thank you so much to you as well. Merry Christmas and a celebratory.