A Very Cambridge Christmas

Sorry for the delay on this post, but I got a bit overwhelmed with coming back to the States and seeing everyone and eating all the delicious American food I could get my hands on.  So…this is a bit late, but still before Christmas which is successful in and of itself.

Christmas at Cambridge isn’t just a one day event.  Oh no.  It has multiple parts.  It lasts weeks.  It starts in NOVEMEBER.  Here’s how my Cambridge Christmas broke down:

Advent Hall: After an awesome Carol Service I went and ate amazing food with friends.  This was in the middle of my intense exam week so it was good to relax and enjoy delicious food. I must have had such a great time because I didn’t take any pictures!

Festive Hall: First Hall that’s actually more than just a normal Hall.  We had crackers!  No, no, not those grainy things you eat with cheese.  Party crackers that have awesome paper crowns inside of them and games and such.  Such a British thing—I remember first learning about them from Harry Potter.  Festive Hall also included awesome table decorations, fancy napkins (if you can get fancier than napkins with your College crest on them), and a HUGE TREE.  My friends and I drank too much mulled wine, flaunted our crowns, and took a bunch of hilarious pictures around the Hall.  I was recovering from an awful cold and was swamped with work, but I still had a blast.

SBR Christmas Party: For grads only, this event was one for which everyone was waiting.  I spent all day with my friend decorating the SBR, picking up mince pies and drinks from Sainsbury’s, and basically running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to make everything perfect.  (I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I was elected to the Social/Dining committee of the SBR, so this was part of my responsibility.)

Dressed up in a fancy dress I’ve been saving since summer.  Got to Hall, picked up my complimentary glass of mulled wine, and went to find my assigned seat at High Table (as part of the SBR, I get perks like this).  I found various friends, took more pictures, then went back to my seat for the start of dinner. 

Dinner was, if I can remember:

First course: split pea soup with vegetable crisps and roll

Second course: turkey, brussel sprouts with chili flakes, turnips with mustard, and potatoes

Third course: Christmas pudding (but I opted for the fruit plate), St. John’s truffles, and coffee/tea

And, of course…more mulled wine, white and red wine, and port

Afterwards we trekked up to the Senior Combination Room to enjoy complimentary wine.  I got to mingle with friends and take more pictures before being shuffled off to the SBR for…port and caroling!  We packed into one tiny room with one tiny piano and belted out various Christmas songs.  It was incredibly fun and really got me energized for the rest of the night.  Best moment: spilling a glass of port down the front of my dress.  Yes, you read correctly.  But let me clarify: it went down the front of my dress…as in, INSIDE my dress.  Here’s what went down: someone asked me to take a picture of them so I held the edge of my port cup between my teeth, leaned back to get the people in the photo, and…well, you can imagine.  The port ran down my neck, down my chest, and kept going down. But it was a Christmas miracle!  I didn’t get a single drop of port on my dress!  On the downside, my white bra is now red.

After that we all ran off to Hall again where it had been transformed into a massive dance floor!  A Scottish ceilidh band was there and we spent the next few hours dancing the night away.  This ceilidh has to be on the most fun things I have done at Cambridge.  The band instructs you in the dance for about five minutes, then you dance for the next five or so minutes before the next dance starts up.  It was hilarious since almost no one knew what they were doing, so you were always smacking into people.  And when I ended up in the back I couldn’t hear, so we were just trying to figure out the dance based on what everyone else was doing.  Hilarity ensued.  Thanks to my great dance partners who dealt with my two left feet and awkward laughter all night long. 

Thanksgiving/Christmas Party: One of my friends threw a vegan-ish Christmas party complete with Secret Santa.  There were so many of us we had to eat on the floor, but it only added to the experience.  I ate sooo much of this delicious food, a really random mish-mash of things that should have made my stomach explode, but only had it asking for more.  We played charades (the highlight of the evening was me trying to act out "Bear Grylls: Born Surivor...I had everyone in stitches they were laughing so hard) and chatted about the most random things, from snakes to sexual dancing.  Yes, just your average Christmas party.

Austrian Christmas: One of my friends from…you guessed it…Austria…threw a small Austrian Christmas party complete with mulled wine and delicious Austrian Christmas cookies.  I ate waaaay too many of these cookies.  But I had a great time just hanging out, relaxing, saying goodbye (for now) to my friends.

Ghost Stories: From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “In the 19^th century, it was a holiday custom in Britain to read mystery or ghost stories aloud by a roaring fire while indulging in tasty, comforting foods of the season…The contrast of a chilling story read amidst the warmth of hearth and family seemed to make the experience that much better.”

I had been looking forward to this all year.  A ton of students got together in the SCR to listen to professors read ghost stories.  We got our glasses of wine, found seats by the fire, and readied ourselves to be creeped out.  The first story was quite good though try as I might I cannot remember the name of it or who wrote it.  The second was part of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and the third was one of my favorites: “The Monkey’s Paw.”  Afterwards we had more wine and mince pies.  It was my last night in Cambridge and the perfect way to conclude my Christmas festivities in England.

So that—in a not-very-small-nutshell—was my Cambridge Christmas.  I hope my American Christmas can live up to it, but considering I’ll be spending it with family and friends, I know it’s going to be fabulous.