13 Jan 2009(Tue)

The image of turkey and stuffing at Christmas in the United Kingdom is so strong that is difficult to imagine anybody, anywhere, eating anything else, even if the reality of our world is of course a lot more diverse. While countries whose cultures have not been so influenced by the Christian faith, such as Japan, may not even take a holiday, even the habits of the West vary with each nation.

 

Meeting with some fellow ‘foreign’ friends at the weekend to catch up after our respective trips home over the festive season (and in the hope that beer would prove to be jet lag’s hidden cure), I learnt that the Christmas meat of choice in Norway is actually mutton, while Dutch people generally cook what they want because they’re far more concerned with St. Nicholas Day, or Sinterklaas, which falls on 6 December. Even if plenty of Americans will still be cooking turkeys, my pal from California eats nothing but Mexican food in respect of his family’s roots. I suppose that, for each of us, the things we grow up with are what define our very sense of ‘normal’.

 

In the UK, the Christmas celebrations carry over onto Boxing Day on the 26th, when we tend to pick over the remaining scraps of turkey with our relatives (ideally, without resorting to pugilistic activity of any kind), and this is an important day within the footballing calendar as well. While most European leagues put their feet up for a winter break, England generally puts on a full programme of fixtures both on Boxing Day and on the 28th, making for one of the busiest times in the whole year.

 

Players may bemoan losing the chance to relax with their families, but as unfathomable as it now sounds, an additional set of league games were also played on 25 December until the 1957/58 season. In part to limit the burden of travel, these were generally organised so that each team would play local derbies athome and away, meaning that anyone whose festive cheer was dampened with defeat on Christmas Day would have an immediate chance for revenge against the same opponents 24 hours later.

 

Even without the back-to-back derbies of the past, the Christmas season remains a massive draw to football supporters and habitually sees some of the highest attendance figures of the season, making an English winter break difficult to implement no matter how many players and managers are in favour. Personally, I spent much of Boxing Day sneaking away from the dinner table to check the Premier League scores on TV, but with most of the non-league action taking place the following day – a Saturday – I was free to enjoy some action at rather more of a grass-root level.

 

Taunton Town (purple) v Paulton Rovers, 27 December 2008

 

The representatives of my small hometown, Taunton Town, are currently battling against relegation from Division One South & West of the Southern Football League – essentially the regional component of the eighth tier of English football – and as the game kicked off amid freezing temperatures and a setting sun at three in the afternoon, the pitch was still glistening with the morning’s frost. It may all sound a little bleak, but you just can’t beat being among 229 supporters – another season’s best – there that day, drinking hot Bovril under the dim light of the ground’s rather basic floodlights.

 

As the New Year dawns and the Japanese season comes to a close with the final of the Emperor’s Cup on 1 January, the first weekend thereafter represents perhaps the most romantic time in the English football year with the 3rd round of the FA Cup. Without a seeding system as employed in Japan, clubs from the lower and non-leagues have the chance to continue the competition’s long tradition of shocking the big guns from the Premier League. Although Barrow AFC of the Conference National (fifth tier) went down to a narrow 2-1 defeat away to top-flight Middlesbrough, Hartlepool United of League One (third tier) caused an upset by eliminating Stoke City, while another side from the same division, Southend United, earned the chance of a home replay this Wednesday against the giants of Chelsea after a 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge.

 

Taunton Town, rather sadly, have not made it past the qualifying stages of the FA Cup since the 1981/82 season – a year before I was born – but the Cup did give a me one last chance to enjoy a bit of British football culture as I watched Manchester United’s 3rd round success in the pub with my brother the day before leaving again. There’s nothing, after all, quite like the things you’re used to.