How we decide to celebrate Christmas is generally determined by our childhoods. We either ape family tradition or rail against it. Just as chocolate Advent calendars were Christmas kryptonite when I was little, so my own children are subjected to tasteful German ones imported at tremendous expense when they’d much rather gorge themselves into a Cadbury’s-induced coma. But our festivities fall within certain very British parameters; and while we share certain traditions with our European neighbours, they have some different, and perhaps more expansive, celebrations of their own, marking Advent and various feasts right up to – and even beyond – Epiphany itself.
Many readers of The Field will be familiar with how Christmas is celebrated in the most frequented holiday destinations in Western Europe: from the galette des rois and leaving shoes out for Père Nöel in France to the joyous celebration of the feasts of the Immaculate Conception and the Epiphany in Spain and Italy. Perhaps it’s the dark evenings, or the cold, but in those countries a little further north, we find a rich source of festive tradition and inspiration. To follow, are a few of the more unusual and interesting.
NORDIC COUNTRIES
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Rory Stewart - The former Cabinet minister and hit podcast host talks to Alec Marsh about the parlous state of British politics, land management and his deep love of the countryside
The gently spoken 51-year-old former Conservative Cabinet minister is a countryman at heart. That's clear: he even changes into a tweed waistcoat for the interview, which takes place at his London home and begins with a question about his precise career status. Having resigned from the Commons and the Conservative Party in 2019, the former diplomat and soldier has reinvented himself, first with an unconventional but promising run as an independent for the London mayoralty (abandoned because of COVID19 in 2020) and then as a media figure, co-hosting one of the country's most popular podcasts, The Rest Is Politics, alongside Alastair Campbell, the former Labour spin doctor.
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