A TRULY BRITISH CHRISTMAS? THERE'S NO SUCH THING!!

A TRULY BRITISH CHRISTMAS? THERE'S NO SUCH THING!!, originally uploaded by brizzle born and bred.

It is a frequent complaint at this time of year - people say Christmas is becoming less traditional, less Christian, less British even.

But very little about our Christmas is either Christian or British, and the traditions we know and love are constantly changing.

Let's start with the date. Nobody even pretended to know when Christ was born for several hundred years after his death.

The twelve days of Christmas are the days between Christmas Day and Epiphany (6th of January) and represent the length of time it took for the wise men from the East to visit the manger of Jesus after his birth.

Popular belief holds that 3 wise men visited Bethlehem from the east bearing gifts. However there is no mention in the bible about the number of wise men who visited. Three gifts were brought - gold, frankincense and myrrh, but names commonly attributed to the wise men - Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar were added some 500 years later.

The 26th of December is traditionally known as St Stephen's Day, but is more commonly known as Boxing Day. The reason it was called this is either alms boxes in church were opened and the money distributed to the poor, or alternatively it was named from the practice of servants receiving boxes of gifts from their employers on this day. Boxing day is NOT named after the practice of throwing out large numbers of boxes after Christmas!

English Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell banned Christmas between 1647 and 1660 because he believed such celebrations were immoral for the holiest day of the year.

After a set of disputes within the Church, it seemed important to set a date on which Christians could come together to celebrate their beliefs.

The first postage stamp to commemorate Christmas was issued in Austria in 1937.

Christmas trees become popular in the UK from 1841 when Prince Albert erected a tree in Windsor Castle following a German tradition. Fir trees have been decorated at Christmas time in Germany since the 8th century.

The Queen's Christmas speech was first televised in 1957.

The definition of a white Christmas in the UK is for a single snow flake (perhaps amongst a shower of mixed rain and snow) to be observed falling in the 24 hours of December 25th.

The Christmas tree displayed in Trafalgar square in London is an annual gift to the UK from Norway since 1947. The Norwegian spruce given is a token of appreciation of British friendship during World War II from the Norwegian people.

It was the custom to eat goose at Christmas until Henry VIII decided to tuck into a turkey. 93 per cent of the population in the UK will eat turkey on Christmas Day; this means 11million turkeys being cooked!

England has only known 7 white Christmases in the entire 20st century.

Christmas pudding was first made as a kind of soup with raisins and wine in it.

Postmen in Victorian England were popularly called “robins”. This was because their uniforms were red. Victorian Christmas cards often showed a robin delivering Christmas mail.

It was decided to take spring as the time of Christ's conception, since it is a time of rebirth, which meant he would have been born in December.

This fitted in with pagan midwinter festivals, and December 25 was chosen.

Since even the date of Christmas is not authentic, it should not surprise us that little else of what we celebrate has much to do with the true meaning of the festival.

Experts even argue over where the Christmas tree comes from.

Some believe Martin Luther first decorated a tree with candles in the 16th century to show his children how the stars twinkled at night. Others say the tradition came two centuries later, and was brought to England by Queen Victoria's husband, Albert. Either way, the tradition is as German as the increasingly popular stollen cake.

Santa Claus, on the other hand, does have roots in early Christianity. St Nicholas of Myra, a third century Christian from Turkey, is believed to be the original St Nick.

He was supposed to have saved three daughters of a poor man from a life of prostitution by providing the dowries they needed to marry. He threw bags of gold through an open window, and they landed in stockings or shoes. This is where the tradition of hanging up stockings comes from.

For our vision of a jolly fat man in a red suit with a white beard, we have to turn once more to Germany.

In the 19th century, German-American artist Thomas Nast made a series of drawings representing Santa like this. Coca-Cola then seized on the image for its adverts.

As for the traditional British roast turkey, it is neither traditional nor British. In Medieval England, the main course of Christmas dinner was boar or peacock, and experts differ on when the turkey came to Britain.

Of all the Christmas traditions, only one goes back to the origins of Christmas - getting drunk.

From the earliest times of pagan and Christian midwinter festivals, getting merrily rosy-cheeked was a key part of a good Christmas.

Santa Claus has many different names around the world including Father Christmas in the UK, Pere Noel in France, Kriss Kringle in Germany, La Befana in Italy, Julinesse in Denmark, Dedushka Moroz (meaning Grandfather Frost) in Russia and the Three Kings in Spain and Mexico.

The typical image we have of Santa Claus dressed in red clothes with white fur trim, is an amalgamation of cultural input over many years. Some people claim the image of Santa we know today is from Coca-cola advertising, but this simply isn't true. The standard Santa garb was well established by the 1920s and it wasn't until the 1930s that Coca-cola first used the Santa Claus design in their advertising.

The word Christmas comes from Cristes maesse, or "Christ's Mass." There is no set date for his birth in scripture and it wasn't celebrated on any particular day. However Christmas was first celebrated on the 25th of December in Rome in 336AD with an aim to replacing the popular pagan winter solstice celebrations.

The first Christmas card was designed in 1843 by J.C. Horsley of Bath.

Our version of Christmas as a gentle family affair came about thanks to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, which conjured up a new ideal of Christmas which soon caught on.

Perhaps, then, Christmas is more British than we realised.

For generations, people have been bewailing that the festive season "isn't what it was". Even Charles Dickens - that great Victorian reinventor of Christmas - said it.