Ok, so it’s December (nearly), which means Christmas is just around the corner. I have always loved this time of year, what with the the winding down at the office, the traffic on the roads diminishing ever so slightly, the mad rush of Christmas shopping and the excuse for being able to eat copious amounts of Christmas cake and (my utmost favourite) gammon, I mean life could not get any better than that.

So I thought it was about time to get the metallic snow covered ball rolling, and write our first festive post for the year……. Yay!!!!!

We at Phuthu headquarters have been wracking our brains all morning to try and discover, what makes South African Christmas’s unique to the rest of the world, do we in fact have any traditions native to our country or have we inherited most of them? A lot of our traditions are in fact inherited, but we have added our own spin on things to make them uniquely South African and the Phuthu ladies have also come up with a few new ones too to try out this year.

  • Everyone has turkey or gammon on Christmas day, but have you tried braaing them in a Weber? Fantastic, especially the gammon, you need to find one that has already been prepared i.e. boiled and salted (Woolies is always a good place to start), then it’s just a matter of completely cooking the gammon through in the weber and occasionally glazing it.
  • Christmas stockings, once again a common Christmas item, but being a dog lover, what I do is, each dog gets its own stocking with their names written on them and on Christmas day, Santa leaves them each a humongous ‘stuck’ of biltong
  • A age old tradition of the Christmas eve drink, eggnog for the Americans, champagne cocktails for the  continental Europeans, well we have Amarula on crushed ice here, yummmm.
  • Christmas or boxing day brunch on the skottle, that’s right, the day after the festivities there is nothing better than a good old fashioned ‘fry-up’, I’ll have my bacon extra crispy thanks.

Here are the brand new never-been-tried traditions, we thought we would just throw out there and see what happens.

  • Match box dreams: Get some good old fashioned Lion match boxes, one for each member of the family, then ask each person to write down their wishes for the year onto a piece of paper, fold them up and put them inside the match boxes, wrap the boxes with wrapping paper and place them on the Christmas tree as a tree decorations, only to be opened on Christmas morning and read out to the family.
  • Make your own Christmas crackers, instead of using the traditional paraphernalia, decorate the crackers with beaded embellishments, the gifts inside can also be uniquely chosen for an African feel.
  • Pack your left over meats, ‘tatties’ and desserts, make some padkos, take a drive out into town, and see if you can donate your meal to a passing person in need of some festive cheer, you can add some cigarettes or a bottle of wine to mix too.

If you have any local traditions that you would like to share with us, feel free to send them through, as we are always open to new activities and fun things to do over Christmas.

By: Kerry