What’s your biggest forget?

Bignose & Beardy’s Traditional Christmas 👃🏻🧔🏻‍♂️ 

Greetings, Ciderling! 

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📦 Nationwide delivery: order by 18th December
🚗 Local collection/delivery: order by 22nd December

What are your must-have Christmas traditions? And what have you forgotten about?

Beardy (aka Steve) talks you through his family Christmas traditions. 

A very Beardy Christmas

“St Nicholas forgot about our family this year. Sob. 

Or rather, we forgot about him. We didn’t put our shoes out and it feels like the end of an era. Being part-German, we clean and put our shoes out on 5th December for St Nicholas. 

✔️ If we’ve been good, he fills the shoes with sweets. 

❌ If we’ve been naughty, he fills the shoes with sticks. 

Cue much giggling as the children came downstairs to find my stick-filled shoes, year on year. But this year, we just…forgot to do it. The children are getting a bit too old for this sort of lark, so it’s noses in phones until the tradition gets its renaissance. It’ll come back either when/if our children have children of their own, or when they reach that bittersweet age where they start hankering for nostalgia. You know the feeling. When you realise being a proper grown-up isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and you want to feel young again. Bah.”

One of the good things about being a proper grownup - you get to drink stuff like our Spirit of Cider, of which we’ve just received a brand new distillation produced by Spirit of the Down’s. Just in time for your Christmas Stocking. But not for your shoe. It’s made from apples and okay it’s not traditionally Christmassy but it’ll certainly warm yer cockles. 

Okay, Beardy. As you were. 

“In the leadup to the big 2-5, we have our little traditions. Mrs Beardy and I wrap the presents with Star Wars on the TV in the background. We use last year’s Christmas cards for the labels (reduce, reuse, recycle) and a bottle of fizz makes light work of the task. 

Our wooden advent calendar gets filled with sweets each day. It’s been proven too risky to pre-fill it for the whole month. 

The Christmas cake gets made in advance, and everyone has a stir. We also make the pud, though this year we haven’t. We’ll have the last of my mother-in-law’s batch. It’ll be an emotional eat because we lost her a couple of years ago. The recipe lives on though, as does Mrs Beardy’s grandma’s recipe, which we use for our cake. All the best traditions carry on through time. 

We don’t leave goodies out for Father Christmas anymore (phew, one less thing to forget), though he does visit to leave a satsuma, chocolate, and a book in each family member’s stocking. Yes, grown-ups too!

The big day

We always dress our best. Presents are opened AFTER breakfast because we’re civilised. Then it’s canapes and fizz to see us through to our late veggie lunch. Then more pressies (we always over-cater, despite promising every year we won’t) then inevitably a nice long walk, some telly, The King’s Speech, and Quality Street. 

Sometimes, we escape to Germany for Christmas and follow a largely similar routine, though it all happens on Christmas Eve and supper is a whopping fat goose and fish feast. Then on Christmas Day it’s all about visiting family. Wherever we are, it’s about fantastic food, delicious drinks, lots of laughs, and winning at Monopoly. Because that’s the most important thing…Thrashing your kids at boardgames.”

Regretti Forgetti….Spaghetti? 

What’s your biggest seasonal forget? Go on, tell us. 

❄️ Neglected to defrost the turkey and had to have spaghetti for lunch instead? 

🎅🏻 Father Christmas forgotten to pop by your house (gulp)? 

🎁 Managed to buy for everyone except the ONE person in your family who will bring it up every Christmas, for as long as you both shall live?

That’s the beauty of traditions though, isn’t it? Even if you balls it up, the story of your balls-up becomes a new tradition in its own right. 

“Remember when I was 8 and Dad forgot to hide the special Santa wrapping paper and I cried all of Christmas Day?” 

Ahh, memories. 

Last delivery dates

And speaking of forgetting (check out this smooth segue…) don’t forget the last dates for ordering in time for Christmas…!

📦 Nationwide delivery - order by 18th December
🚗 Local collection/delivery - order by 22nd December

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