So you study Facebook at Hogwarts?: Christmastime in Oxford

Oxford was full of Christmas decorations, and I had many Christmassy adventures during Week 9.

Christmas Activities:

The Oxford Christmas Market, a German-style Christmas market, is held at the Oxford Castle. There are little wooden stalls with a range of goods like jewelry, sausages, mulled wine, hats, handmade soaps, Christmas items, etc.

My department had a festive Christmas party on Tuesday afternoon. They cleared out the seminar room, turned off the lights, hung up blue icicle lights, and played Christmas music. They even had burning log videos playing on the two screens in the room!

After the OII Christmas party, I went to the Christmas Carols service at Pusey House, the church attached to St. Cross.

There was a choir made of St. Cross students, and the service was very ceremonial. We all received candles that we lit at the beginning of the service. The old chapel looked very pretty by candlelight.
The service was followed with mince pies and mulled wine in the St. Cross common room and then the St. Cross Christmas dinner (Week 9 Formal Hall). Dinner was fully booked, which is rare for our formal halls. I ended up next to an old woman who was a St. Cross alum and still lives in Oxford teaching ESL.

St. Cross Common Room Christmas tree

Formal Hall menu:
Appetizer: crunchy Christmas crostini
Entree: brie and cranberry parcels (other option was braised beef with red wine and cranberry w/ baby roast potatoes and honey parsnips)
Dessert: hot little Christmas cakes

The Christmas tree in the hall had purple and silver ornaments (the St. Cross colors are purple and white).

Christmas tree in the St. X hall

I saw a pantomime of Mother Goose on Wednesday afternoon at the Oxford Playhouse. Pantos are an English Christmas tradition and are based on children's folk tales. Defining characteristics of pantos include a man playing a female character, slapstick (like squirting water), and audience participation (booing the villain, yelling "he's behind you," actors vs audience saying something like "oh no it isn't!"..."oh yes it is!," and a sing-along). The panto I saw also included some top-40 songs.

not a bad seat in the house

On Saturday evening, one of my course-mates hosted a dinner that was initially supposed to be a Christmas-themed meal, but we ended up eating regular food. For dessert, however, I kept to the Christmas theme and brought mince pies and Christmas pudding. Mince pies are pastries served hot that have "mincemeat" inside. The mincemeat was dried fruits and spices, not meat. Pudding in England doesn't refer to the type of pudding we have; it is more of a bread pudding. Christmas pudding is also served warm and is made of fruits (like raisins and currants), spices, and alcohols like cider and sherry. It tasted like a giant blob of 'ehhh,' but maybe that's because I bought a pre-packaged pudding from Tesco.

I flew home on the Monday after week 9, and even Heathrow was decorated for Christmas!