Even though I said in this week’s podcast that I planned to see Spencer, I still haven’t! I will, I will, I promise. I’ve been looking forward to seeing it mostly because it’s a snapshot of one of my favorite side-stories in royal gossip, which is that Christmas at Sandringham sounds really awful. Every year, royal reporters dutifully detail how hellish “royal Christmas” is, with it’s military-like schedule, a half-dozen wardrobe changes every day, and heavily Germanic traditions. The Queen likes to go to church not once but twice on Christmas day. Kids are not allowed for most of the royal Christmas celebrations. There are strict protocols everywhere you look. No gift giving on Christmas day, and the presents which are exchanged (on Christmas Eve) have to be either cheap or handmade. Spencer screenwriter Steven Knight also revealed another awful royal Christmas tradition: people are weighed upon their arrival and their departure.
The Windsors aren’t just traditionalists. As the documentary Sandringham: The Queen at Christmas makes clear, they are also a military family—meaning that the 72-hour holiday is scheduled with military precision and strict attention to royal protocol. For example, even now, arrivals at Sandringham are choreographed—with the more junior royals arriving first and the senior royals following.
Per a tradition dating back to Queen Victoria, guests are still required to weigh themselves on antique scales upon arrival and before leaving—the rationale being that they only enjoyed themselves if they gained three pounds. By 1991, Knight says that Diana’s bulimia was known within palace walls but never discussed. “The fact that someone with her condition was coming to a place where you have to be weighed when you arrive,” says Knight, is particularly resonant.
Per German tradition, gifts are exchanged on Christmas Eve—a difficult rite of passage for Sandringham newcomers given the royals’ fascination with cheap presents. There are formal black-tie dinners on both Christmas Eve and Christmas, with seating plans drawn up by the queen herself. (One rule: couples are split up to make for better conversation.) Table etiquette is important—apparently, according to the aforementioned documentary, guests should not sprinkle salt and pepper directly onto their food, but on the plate itself. Wine glasses should only be touched at the stem. When the queen puts her fork and knife down, all of the guests must also put down their utensils.
On Christmas, there is the annual photo-call and walk to church before the queen delivers her yearly holiday broadcast. The Christmas dinner is a black-tie affair for which tiaras and fine jewels are encouraged. The queen’s dresser, Angela Kelly, has revealed that the monarch changes wardrobes up to seven times a day during the holiday period—and sets the tone for what the other guests are to wear.
“Once Her Majesty has chosen her dress for dinner, a handwritten notice is pinned up in the Dressers’ Corridor detailing what she will be wearing, so that the Queen’s ladies’ maids can select an appropriate dress for the lady they are looking after,” Kelly wrote in her book The Other Side of the Coin: The Queen, the Dresser and the Wardrobe.
“Imagine Diana in her circumstance, and the fact that everything’s based around food, and everything’s based around what you wear, and how you look,” says Knight. “And that means what shape you are. So everything is about what’s in the mirror, not what’s really there. I used mirrors a lot in script because it’s about reflection, and she’s not the reflection. She’s herself.”
The “weighing royals upon their arrival at Sandringham” thing is apparently dealt with in Spencer, because the film also deals with Diana’s bulimia and how many triggers she was dealing with whenever she went to Sandringham. While she spent her childhood on the estate (before her father became the Earl Spencer), she absolutely loathed it and loathed going to the big Sandringham house. Also, if someone tried to weigh me at a family gathering, I would throw hands, OMFG.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, ‘Spencer’.
That sounds awful and exhausting.
But sounds very much like the RF too
That is so unbelievably fucked up. Omfg.
Agreed, and especially callous given that they knew what she was going through. I’ve looked at Kate a few times over the years and worried about how thin and fragile she appeared.
Why the British people keep this inbred, horrid family on the payroll, I’ll never know.
As much as I dislike the couple, props to W&K for spending Christmas with the Middletons rather than the Windsors a few times (is it alternate years?). I couldn’t do this kind of Christmas at all, I just couldn’t.
This reminds me of the year my mom gave us all scales for Xmas lol. To be fair we didn’t have to use them. I can’t even…what a miserable holiday
So you only enjoyed yourself if you gained 3 pounds? Who gets enjoyment out of gaining weight, other than wrestlers trying to make weight for a tournament?
I saw an article describing this as checking to make sure everyone was well fed. Like pigs, you know.
Kaiser, I’m with you. I would not only throw hands if someone did this to me, but I’d also never attend Christmas there again.
And what happens if you don’t gain 3 pounds? Like Kate sure isn’t. What’s the punishment?
This Christmas celebration sounds stupid and pointless. Changing 7 times in a day? Arriving in particular order? The lady’s maid choosing your outfit based on what TQ wears? It sounds hideous.
One thing I will always give Will/Kate here: I can understand why they’d rather have Christmas away from this or with the Middletons. I can see why anyone would nope out of this.
If it’s dating back to Victoria, I can sort of see it. She was extremely greedy about food and was on a strict diet in her youth so in adulthood food became a huge fetish, and it was that way for Edward VII. George V and Queen Mary weren’t big foodies but they were probably pretty obsessed with keeping any Victorian traditions they could (not to mention Mary’s mother, ironically the last Duchess of Cambridge, was so large that she was nicknamed Fat Mary which was an inside joke in the courts of Europe – this may have played a role and her daughter Mary of Teck may have wanted to avoid that) and since Queen Mary was such a huge influence on the Queen I can see that tradition following her too. But it’s a relic of a time when plumpness was viewed very differently (not to say that slimness and a small waist weren’t desirable but Victorians enjoying food was much different then).
Definitely a custom that should have been tossed long ago.
Hopefully everyone just rolls their eyes and wears their heavy boots for the final weigh in
Or drinks a few BIG glasses of water right before!
Royal Christmas has always sounded like making a dozen or two people miserable for the enjoyment of one women, but maybe some of the other folks like all the tradition too.
According to the worldview in The Windsors, Anne really enjoys the tradition and Camilla enjoys enforcing the tradition. 😂
I saw Spencer yesterday. It’s a gothic horror story and I LOATHED it. I went with my 16 yr old son( at his request, film fanatic) at the end a few of us had a discussion. The younger set loved it , the older set hated it. One person walked out. Try it if you really want to but I’d wait for cable.
I was just coming here to say this. Spencer is the first movie I’ve seen in theaters since the pandemic started, and it was…ugh. But then again, I think it was designed to make us all feel the way Diana felt during Xmas with the royals (paranoid, out of sorts, filled with dread), so it was certainly a success in that regard.
so interesting how different this plays to different people! I went with my teenagers, and I LOVED it, it took me a second to get into it, but then I was mesmerized. And I think Kristen Stewart is an INCREDIBLE actress. i think she will win an Academy Award for this or at least be nominated. My teenagers were split, one loved it, like me and couldn’t stop talking about it after, the other was bored and didn’t get it. So curious to hear what others think.
Salt and pepper on the plate? 🤔
Yes, it’s an upper class thing to do. Little piles on the side of your plate that you dip into, as opposed to sprinkling condiments over the entire plate. Taught by my mother who was evacuated during WW2 to an upper class family (finishing school, fox hunting with the royals, etc…a real eye-opener.)
Just another form of control.
It’s also another way to exclude and mock those who don’t know these invisible class rules. I’ve written before about having Sunday lunch with a Duchess who kept telling me how to eat because “As an American, you might not know to pass that to your husband”. I was very young and just took it, but how I’d love to have that experience now. I’m older and louder now.
For cryin’ out loud…😡😡😛
Other than the weighing thing, this just sounds like old fashioned very wealthy person British Christmas. Couples are supposed to be seated separately at dinner parties, which this effectively is, and rich people seem to have an abundance of clothes, so it’s not like changing clothes is some huge lift. I mean if you have every watched or read any old fashioned British big house dramas, none of this (again except the weighing, WTF) is that new. And it’s not the tradition in a majority of families, but lots of us are Christmas Eve openers.
The salt and pepper on the plate thing is a new one to me, though!
And again, WTF on the weighing.
I was taught to transfer butter from the butter dish to the plate before putting it on food by my UK emigre grandparents. we just put the salt and pepper directly on the food tho. they had salt cellars with little spoons – wish I had one now!
Putting the butter on the plate before putting it on your food is not unusual – I was taught to do that and my kids were taught that in cotillion (aka manners and dancing class, which is common with middle schoolers in the South).
The salt and pepper thing is new to me, though. I was taught to put it in my hand and then sprinkle my food, but I’ve never heard to pour it on the side of the plate.
@Betsy I agree. The only thing that I find (extremely) problematic is the weigh-in’s/weigh-out’s. This is not a German tradition. But gift exchange on Christmas Eve is, in many families. And I kind of like the idea that they only give cheap or hand-made gifts…these people don’t want or need for anything, so this is rather quaint.
And, being a huge Downton Abbey fan, the rest of the pomp and pageantry that goes along with the event doesn’t seem surprising to anyone.
I agree, some parts of it sound awful (weighing in, thanks for the trigger just reading about it), just awful, but here in Europe (I’m from Poland) we love our Christmas Eve tradition of giving gifts on Christmas Eve and it’s lovely when done with love and kindness.
hfs – I wonder if it’s announced or is just entered into the historic records?
I think K Stew resembles Princess Charlene far more than Diana
Gosh. I was about to say that she would be an excellent choice to play Charlene. Now her story would make a very interesting film.
Wait, http://www.royal.uk says that in the 60s when the Queen had small kids “many” (most?) Christmases were celebrated at Windsor Castle and it wasn’t 100% Sandringham until 1988. That means she gave herself flexibility with young’uns but not anyone else.
yeah I read somewhere that after that 1988 Christmas they all had such a good time (probably meaning the Queen and Phillip) that they decided to make every christmas there. so when Diana was at the tail end of her marriage “Sandringham Christmas” wasnt such an established thing as it is now. But, I bet pretty much everything was the same at Windsor.
Well that would end my celebrating Christmas with that family even if they were mine. It all sounds like some twisted gothic tale about a family that sold their souls, who else would think taking all the joy and love out of Christmas is how to celebrate Christianity?
There’s plenty to criticize about the Cambridges, but I’ve never faulted them for NOT wanting to do Sandringham for Christmas. It sounds miserable for adults and extremely miserable for kids.
It sounds to me like the plot of a British country house murder mystery.
It really does!
Yeah I can definitely see how triggering that would be and would cause you to have issues with food. Or make it worse if you already have eating disorders.
Changing outfits 7 times? She’s 95! Who TF would want to do that at any age let alone 95?
Trying to work this out…
1) first outfit of the day, casual, for breakfast
2) second outfit, country casual for walking the dogs out in the fresh air
3) third outfit, smart, for luncheon with the Queen
4) fourth outfit, riding attire, for hacking
5) fifth outfit, smart/casual for afternoon tea with/without the Queen
6) sixth outfit, casual, for merry games, etc
7) seventh outfit, evening dress with tiaras, etc for formal dining with HRH.
Hope that helps, folks!
And if that’s too much, y’all are welcome at Casa Booboocita for Christmas.
1) First outfit: sweatpants and t-shirt in the print/color of your choice. Vintage rock band t-shirts are encouraged but not required.
2) Second outfit: not required, unless you spent the morning playing with my cats and need to get away from the fur.
3) Third outfit: jeans and sweatshirt, unless you don’t feel like changing.
4) Fourth outfit: whatever makes you comfortable while stuffing your gob with tamales and frijoles. You may change if you get food all over your front, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. Elastic waistbands are highly recommended.
5) Fifth outfit: beach attire. You’ll be beaching yourself like a whale in front of the TV, so wear something loose.
6) Six — you know what? Wear whatever you like. This is exhausting.
LOL, they wear something to church, change when they get back for lunch and watching her christmas address, and then change again for dinner. So that’s three outfits but apparently I’m missing like 19 others lol so I have no clue.
I do dress up on holidays just because I like to and think its fun, but I also bought velvet leggings so I can be dressy and comfy, haha.
Don’t forget the ugly Christmas sweaters, especially the ones with the lightbulbs operated by a mini battery pack. Good times!
Oh, oh, I want to guess!
1) morning/breakfast
2) church
3) lunch
4) walking/outdoors
5) riding
6) afternoon tea outfit
7) dinner
booboocita: I really appreciate #4, as I have recently noticed all my at-home clothes have food stains on them, and as work clothes have become at-home clothes, that means pretty much everything.
Well. Now i know what hell is. Poor Diana. No married in woman has a chance of surviving a family like this.
This doesn’t sound German at all! I have friends in Germany and actually was invited to spend Christmas there in 2002, and it was really special.
No weighing, no multiple changes of outfits, no (multiple) church visits, no cheap gifts, no weird table manners. I believe the Windsors’ traditions are royal, NOT German.
German here: I think the only German thing about Windsors’ Christmas is exchanging gifts on Christmas Eve. We do not weigh ourselves when meeting family and friends. We know we have gained weight by this time because we ate a lot of Lebkuchen, biscuits, Stolle (although I hate that), roasted almonds and and and… 🙂 We also drank our own weight in Glühwein. Who sets a foot on a scale around Christmas?
Cultural traditions for families are part and parcel of holiday celebrations. The Windsors have just taken the lovely and fun out of their German heritage. I’d probably big sick too and get very depressed at being required to participate in that.
But some people still believe that Harry and Meghan want to go back to the UK for Christmas. What a nightmare!
The description of their Christmas alone is enough to make me want to abolish the monarchy.
Lol!
Christmas at Sandringham sounds like a queen ass-kissing fest, how FUN for everyone
Genuinely the only relatable thing I’ve ever had sympathy for W/K is this trash. You couldn’t pay me enough to endure this and be away from my kids on Christmas. I have always though it totally reasonable when they’d skip it. Fuck, I’d skip it every year.
The RF are a bunch of jerks – imagine thinking this kind of rude, self-centered bs is in any way appropriate behavior just because of an accident of birth.
Well I spend Christmas in pajamas drinking red wine and eating my face off, so I would decline this invitation.
Lol! Nap. Don’t forget a good nap.
Reminds me of the kind of “fun” popular in boarding school. Always cruel, always a contest. Survival of the fittest, what a warm Christmas memory.
Happy holidays indeed.
Imagine growing up having this kind of Christmas. Sounds like an awful time. I hope the Sussexes don’t go.
Meanwhile, at Montecito, this Christmas will be filled with love and joy and laughter.
Right??? Imagine them with Megan’s mom and the kiddos. Making their own traditions….
That does not sound fun at all, and sounds like you have to pack a million outfits. What if your outfit #4 for the day clashes with what the Queen decided to wear? What then?
Yeah, I would not be interested in any of that. What is the point in all of those protocols anymore?
Yes, except none of those people (except for Meghan and Harry) have ever packed for themselves; they have staff do that. Hell, the guests don’t even have to dress themselves if they don’t want to – remember Charles even has someone put toothpaste on his toothbrush for him! Staff are handling all the coordination to prevent clashing, all the ironing/steaming if needed, laying out each outfit, polishing the coordinating jewelry, fixing hair and makeup… the actual family members have nothing to do except drink and make petty, sniping comments at each other.
Ick, a public weigh in? I didn’t think it was possible to make Christmas at Sandringham sound even less appealing and out of touch, but I was wrong.
The cheap/ gag gifts thing has always bothered me, too. Handmade I can understand, cuz otherwise what do you get for someone who has a gold piano? But buying cheap crap seems like not only bad for the environment, but also given what we know about this family, I’ll bet it’s really mean.
Couldn’t they use the money to gift coats or school supplies or books or *something* that might help families or children who need it?
Jay, ITA. I have long thought the cheap gift thing sounds incredibly wasteful the way they do it. Your idea about gifting to organizations sounds like a much better idea, but I get the sense these weirdos get a kick out of the idea of looking for cheap useless gifts even though they are so rich. Sort of like play acting at being like the people they look down on.
I dunno, I always thought the idea of buying the queen a Big Mouth Billy Bass or whatever was the one time any royals seemed to have a sense of humor and fun.
This reminds me of the planet Bethselamin in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and how they deal with tourists:
“… the net balance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete while on the planet is surgically removed from your body weight when you leave; so every time you go to the lavatory there, it is vitally important to get a receipt.”
So … free lipo with if you don’t have the receipts???
Sign me up 😀
Lol, I don’t think visitors are in control of what part of their body is surgically removed.
Poor kids.
Yeah, boy. As if being raised in this family didn’t mess them up enough. Can you imagine year after year of this kind of Christmas alone? That would be therapists’ meat for years…
This gaining weight thing on Christmas must be hell for Kate. She probably wears clothes with lots of big heavy buttons.lol.
I truly don’t understand how on earth you could change clothes that many times during a day?
@Killfanora, I love your list–but you would spend so much time changing, then refreshing your hair & makeup (for women) from changing all those clothes, it would ruin the day and it’s just WEIRD AF. I get maybe four or five outfit changes–breakfast, lunch, outdoors, smart casual and then black tie–BUT still.
Exhausting. And did I mention WEIRD. This family is stuck in amber. They truly don’t represent the modern world nor modern Britain.
@Qzie…..wellll, I personally think the royals are missing a trick as I’ve thought of an EIGHTH change of clothes. The “shooting” party outfit! I know they save murdering birds for Boxing Day, but the killing fields could be used on Christmas Day, too. ‘Cos, you know, instead of changing outfits 3 hourly, you could reduce it to 2 hourly!
Hi, I live in Germany – and don’t be silly 🙂
The weighing “tradition” is from Victoria/RF alone, and has nothing to do with Germany or the customs here. Thank goodness…
Only the aspect of gifts on the 24th and the Church visits is typical German. Also we don’t do gifts in the morning but in the afternoon or evening.
A lunch or dinner on Christmas (24th) is commonly “cold potato salad and hotdogs”, meant to be no fuss, light fare and to leave space for the family meals that are large and heavy, later on after the church visit or from the day before.
Its not necessarily widespread to do this, but many people like to still do this as a matter of “tradition”, and the family I am involved with does it every year.
I usually think it’s an awful custom that when the queen puts down her eating utensils everyone must stop eating, but when the focus is on this much food at Christmas I’m sure they all breathe a huge sigh of relief at that signal. I wonder how many push their food around their plates until she does that.
Yes. Some revolutionary should break that tradition one of these days and keep eating. What would happen? Would security guards come drag you away from the table?
Prince Philip is probably grateful he doesn’t have to do this anymore.
How interesting that she endured Sandringham Christmas (among much else, probably) as a child, and still married into the family.
Naivety and she was in love with Charles.
She lived in her father’s household at Sandringham–he was TQ’s equerry–so she didn’t actually spend time in the big house. The Spencers had their own house on the estate.
As a native from Italy, I agree about the markets but the big Christmas meal is at lunchtime on Christmas Day. There has never been any Xmas dinner as far as I can remember as my grandmothers and aunts were preparing the filled pasta, the lasagne and the cakes on Christmas Eve.
I’ve heard very rarely of people celebrating anything on Christmas Eve. And I always opened presents on Xmas Day and I was born in the early 1970s.
(The advent calendar is a tradition in UK but nobody used to hang it in Italy).
You don’t celebrate the 7 fishes on Christmas Eve? Italian here too and Christmas Eve is huge event, just as big as as our Christmas meal, which was normally in the early afternoon
I’m of Italian heritage and Christmas Eve was always as important as Christmas Day with the huge seafood dinner on the eve and large meal next day also in the early afternoon.
My father’s German family tradition was to not decorate the tree until Christmas eve. We would get to open one present on Christmas Eve.
So petty Betty really hates children. Like for real hates kids and wanted her kids to dislike their kids the way she disliked her own. How is it a family Christmas if the kids are banned. Like she’s horrible.
As someone who struggled with, and finally recovered from anorexia, this angers me to NO END!!!! I can’t imagine the trigger and horror this was for Diana, with her battle with bulimia! No wonder Harry and Megan left this toxicity!! Good for them!
The weigh-ins are terrible. I wonder what the BRF would do if my fat ass waddled through the door? Would I be expected to gain 3 lbs, too? Would they tell me to LOSE 3 lbs? Or would they simply decree “No food for you!”, leaving me to starve unless I had the foresight to slip some snacks in my overnight bag?!?
As for the rest of it…eh, I could put up with it. I’d just lean into the Downton Abbey cosplay for a couple of days. However, I’d make sure to skedaddle out of there on Christmas night so I could spend Boxing Day at home lolling around in sweatpants.
I agree with the other poster who said the gag gifts are wasteful. I’d probably give handmade tree ornaments and call it a day.
I also imagine that some of the gag gifts are, or were at one time, terribly inappropriate. I can just imagine them all laughing around the tree about some racist gag gift that one of them received.
Honestly, some of those traditions sound like they’d be fun if no one was taking them too seriously. “Oh, you didn’t eat enough pudding!” could be a silly joke that everyone enjoys (if none of them have eating disorders). “Put your fork down; Gran’s sipping water!” could be treated as a game. And arriving by age actually mimics a tradition my family has where everyone lines up by height to go downstairs on Christmas morning.
The formal parties are just something you’d have to go through if you’re royalty, so I don’t think it’s fair to portray those as arduous; the British royal family has to make a show of being Christian, and taking Christmas seriously would be one way to. Also, cheap/hand-made presents actually makes perfect sense for a wealthy family, because then it’s all about silly fun instead of one-upmanship.
In other words, there’s a fashion to portray the royal family as villains, but I doubt they’re terrible all the time. Most of the time, I suspect they’re just a wonk-ass family like most of us have to contend with to some degree.
“Most of the time, I suspect they’re just a wonk-ass family like most of us have to contend with to some degree.”
Lol, no, no they aren’t.
I am very Catholic, and my family does not take Christmas “this seriously.” There is nothing Christian about these traditions, except for going to Church twice. In no way does weighing your family members – or not allowing parents to spend Christmas with their children – honor the birth of Jesus.
This is a family that requires curtseying according to rank in private. If they were a relaxed fun family we wouldn’t be seeing the generational trauma that we do in all of them.
What a fu**ing joke. Can’t believe Brits still pay for these weirdos.
“…guests should not sprinkle salt and pepper directly onto their food, but on the plate itself.”
😳😳😳 Why is that the “classier” option? Yeesh…
I’m still trying to figure out how that works for mashed potatoes. Or peas. Or pretty much anything.
By the time you’ve managed to get some peas/mashed potatoes stuck on the fork tines to dip into the salt, the Queen will have finished eating and put her silverware down. Meal over!
So do you think this lovely Christmas tradition will END once the Queen dies?
Looking at that 1st picture of Diana. All I can think is those Windsor genes in PWT really gave the Spencer genes a knockout punch when he grew up.
The unfortunate thing about their family desire to mate with their cousins is that it has made them uglier than most. The big colonizing energy of their traditions is perhaps why they think it’s fun to be weighed like livestock. Do they make the staff do it first & probably naked for their amusement sounds about white to me. On holiday they do not spend time with their children & prefer the smell of bloodied animals for sport instead. This family 🤢. Diana’s good genes saved Harry but Wil was always doomed to accept mediocrity & it shows. Long live Megan & Harry!
It’s 3 pounds of royal silverware in my pockets on the way out for me! HA!
This I like!
+1. LOLOLOL.
+2 – LOL. If there is any left after Andrew has run off with it.
Christmas at Sandringham sounds like the worst holiday celebration ever.
I never celebrated christmas so I dont know what the tradition and big fuss abt it . But everyone in royal family except queen hate christmas at Sandringham. Even in the crown ep it was awful and horrible. Their food is so bland and tasteless. These ppl clingy to stupid tradition no wonder they are so backward in thinking . Those courtiers also encouraged these behaviour . Queen was like william coddle a lot from young age. They both are fucked up.
Whenever I see someone holding the bowl instead of the stem I inwardly tell myself, ‘look at that one boiling wine’. This is a good rule.
It sounds awful for anyone not born to it or somehow comfortable with the very specific familial traditions. I mean, in my family (four kids) we had something informally known as “Night In The Barrel.” You never knew when it was coming, but it was your night to be (not so) gently mocked and held accountable for your flaws, pretensions, etc.
Even the most loving of families can be rough. My parents were far from perfect, but they were, for the most part, loving, supportive, ethical, fair, etc. But they didn’t pull punches. They put all of us through the wringer.
Diana wasn’t born to that family. They thought because she passed the initial “test” she could handle it. Elizabeth thought she as unintended Monarch had been through more than anyone else, so she had little sympathy. But she was wrong. She was still Queen Bee and she cowed everyone else, including her own sister, son, and the daughter-in-law.
It’s all very sad. I won’t see “Spencer,” for a variety of reasons. But I will be watching “The Crown” to the end….despite my early reluctance to watch it at all.
Just saw Henry Goode (Lord Snowdon in early seasons opposite Vanessa Kirby) in “Discovery Of Witches.” He is so good (sorry). I mean, it is kind of “Twilight” for adults but that’s OK.
Thank you (from germany).
Nothing of these aforementioned “germanic” traditions seem familiar to me. Christmas markets on the other hand.. oh boy, I love and miss them so much.
The weighing thing is purely british ( and purely evil, me thinks).
Yeah, given the amount of disease tied into malnutrition that was rife during Queen Victoria’s reign she can feck right off with starting this tradition.