Christmas and New Year's Eve Rules
The English year is punctuated by national calendrical holidays: some are mere commas, others are more important semi-colons; the Christmas holiday and New Year's Eve are the final full stop. Most calendrical rites were originally religious events, often ancient pagan festivals appropriated by Christianity, but the Christian significance of many of these rites is largely ignored. Ironically, they might be said to have reverted to something more like their original pagan roots, which serves the Christians right for hi-jacking them in the first place, I suppose.
Christmas and New Year's Eve are by far the most important. Christmas Day (25th of December) is firmly established as a 'family' ritual, while New Year's Eve is a much more raucous celebration with friends. But when English people talk about 'Christmas' (as in 'What are you doing for Christmas?' or 'I hate Christmas!'), they often mean the entire holiday period, from the 23rd/24th of December right through to New Year's Day, including, typically and traditionally, at least some of the following:
* Christmas Eve (family; last minute shopping; panics and squabbles; tree lights; drinking; too many nuts and chocolates; possibly church - early evening carols or midnight service);
* Christmas Day (family; tree; present-giving rituals; marathon cooking and eating of huge Christmas lunch; the Queen's broadcast on television/radio - or pointedly not watching/listening to the Queen; fall asleep - perhaps while watching The Sound of Music, The Wizard of Oz or similar; more food and drink; uncomfortable night);
* Boxing Day (hangover; family 'outing' of some sort, if only to local park; long country walk; visiting the other set of relatives; escape from family to pub);
* 27th-30th December (slightly strange 'limbo' period; some back at work, but often achieving very little; others shopping, going for walks, trying to keep children amused; more overeating and drinking; visiting friends/relatives; television; videos; pub);
* New Year's Eve (friends; big boozy parties or pub-crawls; dressing up/fancy-dress; loud music; dancing; champagne, banging pans etc. at midnight; fireworks; 'Auld Lang Syne'; New Year's resolutions; taxi-hunt/long cold walk home)
* New Year's Day (sleep late; hangover)
Many people's Christmases may not follow this pattern, but most will include a few of these ritual elements, and most English people will at least recognise this rough outline of an average, bog-standard Christmas.
Often, the term 'Christmas' comprises much more than this. When people say 'I hate Christmas' or moan about how 'Christmas' is becoming more and more of a nightmare or an ordeal, they are generally including all the 'preparations' for and 'run-up' to Christmas, which may start at least a month ahead, and which involve office/workplace Christmas parties, 'Christmas shopping', a 'Christmas Panto' and quite possibly, for those with school-age children, a school 'Nativity Play' or Christmas concert - not to mention the annual ritual of writing and dispatching large quantities of Christmas cards. English people understand 'Christmas' to include any or all of these customs and activities, as well as the Christmas-week celebrations.
The school Nativity Play is, for many, the only event of any religious content that they will encounter during the Christmas period, although its religious significance tends to get lost in the social drama and ritual of the occasion - particularly the issue of whose children have been fortunate enough to secure the leading roles (Mary, Joseph) and the principal supporting ones (Three Kings, Innkeeper, Head Shepherd, Angel-of-the-Lord), and whose must suffer the indignity of playing mere background shepherds, angels, sheep, cows, donkeys and so on. Or the school may have been gripped by a sudden fit of political correctness and attempted to replace the traditional Nativity with something more 'multicultural' ('we're all very multiculti round here' an Asian youth-worker from Yorkshire told me). This being England, the squabbles and skirmishes over casting and other issues are rarely conducted openly but are more a matter of indirect scheming, Machiavellian manipulation and indignant muttering. On the night, Fathers tend to show up late and record the second half of the Nativity on shaky, cinema-verite video, unfortunately focusing throughout on the wrong sheep.
The Christmas Panto is a bizarre, quintessentially English custom. Almost every local theatre in the country puts on a pantomime at Christmas, in which a children's fairy-tale or folk tale - such as Aladdin, Cinderella, Puss in Boots, Dick Whittington, Mother Goose, etc. - is performed, always with men in drag (known as Pantomime Dames) playing the main female parts and a woman in men's clothes as Principal Boy. Tradition requires much noisy audience-participation for the children, with cries of 'HE'S BEHIND YOU!' 'OH NO HE ISN'T!' 'OH YES HE IS!' (a ritual into which adult members of the audience often throw themselves with considerable gusto), and a script full of salacious double-entendres for the grown-ups (at which the children laugh heartily, before patiently explaining them to their parents).
The Christmas Moan-fest and the Bah-humbug Rule
'Christmas shopping' is the bit many English people are thinking of when they say that they hate Christmas, and usually means shopping for Christmas presents, food, cards, decorations and other trappings. As it is considered manly to profess to detest any sort of shopping, men are particularly inclined to moan about how much they dislike Christmas. But the Christmas-moan is now something of a national custom, and both sexes generally start moaning about Christmas in early November.
There is effectively an unwritten rule prescribing 'bah-humbug', anti-Christmas moaning rituals at this time of year, and it is unusual to encounter anyone over the age of eighteen who will admit to unequivocal enjoyment of Christmas. This does not stop those who dislike Christmas taking a certain pride in their distaste, as though they were the first people ever to notice 'how commercial the whole thing has become' or how 'it starts earlier every year - soon there'll be bloody Christmas decorations in August' or how it seems to get more and more expensive, or how impossibly crowded the streets and shops are.
Christmas-moaners recite the same platitudes every year, fondly imagining that these are original thoughts, and that they are a beleaguered, discerning minority, while the eccentric souls who actually like Christmas shopping and all the other rituals tend to keep quiet about their unorthodox tastes. They may even join in the annual moan-fest, just to be polite and sociable - much as people who enjoy rain will often courteously agree that the weather is beastly. The cynical 'bah, humbug!' position is the norm (particularly among men, many of whom find something almost suspiciously effeminate about an adult male who admits to liking Christmas) and everyone loves a good Christmas moan, so why spoil their fun? Those of us who actively enjoy Christmas tend to be almost apologetic about our perversity: 'Well, yes, but, um, to be honest, I actually like all the naff decorations and finding presents for people... I know it's deeply uncool...'
Not all Christmas-moaners are mindless, sheep-like followers of the 'bah-humbug' rule. Two groups of Christmas-haters who have good reason to complain, and for whom I do have sympathy, are parents struggling on low incomes, for whom the expense of buying presents that will please their children is a real problem, and working mothers for whom, even if they are not poor, the whole business can truly be more of a strain than a pleasure.
Christmas-present Rules
A gift, as any first-year anthropology student can tell you, is never free. In all cultures, gifts tend to come with some expectation of a return - this is not a bad thing: reciprocal exchanges of gifts are an important form of social bonding. Even gifts to small children, who cannot be expected to reciprocate in kind, are no exception to this universal rule: children receiving Christmas presents are supposed to reciprocate with gratitude and good behaviour. The fact that they often do no such thing is beside the point - a rule is not invalidated just because people break it. It is interesting to note that in the case of very young children, who cannot be expected to understand this rule, we do not give Christmas presents 'directly', but invent a magical being, Father Christmas, from whom the gifts are said to come. The traumatic discovery that Father Christmas does not exist is really the discovery of the laws of reciprocity, the fact that Christmas presents come with strings attached.