“And so this is Christmas…”

In America there is atleast an acknowledgement of numerous December holidays, including Hanukah.  But here in London it is Christmas baby, and you can’t help but get in the spirit.

And so we trod off to see the lights on Oxford and Regent Street, we ice skate in Kensington, Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park and then we go to the Christmas Pantomime Show.  Because that is what Brits do. 

What is the Christmas Panto, you ask?  Don’t think Marcel Marceau, think fairy tales with cross dressing step sisters, old women singing Lady Gaga, a gay fellow named Buttons and lots of sight gags that make six year old’s laugh so hard that milk flows through their noses.

My wife got us all tickets for the Cinderella Panto.  As a side note, it just so happens that my wife is out of the country on the day of the show leaving me to explain to my children (11, 13, 15) why we are going to a theatre populated by people wearing big boy pull up diapers and celebrating their 6^th birthday party.

Here is how the Panto game is played:  The evil step-sisters are sleeping in a haunted room and every time they look for the ghost, they can’t find him.  But the ghost is standing right behind them and the crowd screams with vigor, “They’re behind you.”  Or another witty one includes the aforementioned Buttons who yells, “How ya doin?” to the crowd which in turn raises its hands and screams, “Top Bananas!”

The shows run from Late November through January and while not explicitly about Christmas, it is an integral part of the British holiday experience.  The show is not silent, as I expected, instead it is filled with song and silliness that makes the under 7 crowd squeal.  They are always based on traditional stories that the audience is supposed to know, some of the shows this year include:  Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and Jack and the Beanstalk.

There are modern twists to the story, including the fact that everyone calls the lead “Cinders” in this tale, and every year the stories are updated with topical jokes, some here included the Olympics, the press hacking scandal, unemployment and jokes about the dodgy neighborhood in which this particular theatre sat, called Hackney Empire.

The show peaks near the end when the horse, Clapton, saves the day by foiling the evil steps sisters (brothers) from stealing Cinders off in a hot air balloon. At which point the horse, (think horse from an elementary school play, not Warhorse), comes front and center to receive a medal and the entire crowd sings along to “Clip Clop Clapton, the Wonder Horse.”  Not once, not twice, but three times.

This was one of those Christmas traditions that we can say we’ve done, although as the winter solstice approaches next year, we may leave Clip Clop Clapton for the tourists.