Christmas Pudding in the UK

In the United Kingdom, Christmas is a very important event of the year - an event to which the preparations start very early (usually in November). The preparation includes cooking the traditional Christmas food like turkey or goose, potatoes, cranberry sauce, "pigs in a blanket" (small sausages wrapped in bacon) and for the desert the traditional Christmas Pudding. 

In the UK Christmas is celebrated on the 25th of December, where you get together with all of your family to have a big Christmas dinner at midday. In the morning on the 25th you open up your gifts, and usually children leave their Christmas stocking on the chimney in hope for Santa Claus to come and give them something. 

A special traditions for Britain is the annual Christmas speech of the British Monarch. Apart from getting together with the family, it is also a Christmas tradition to go and visit friends and family, that has not been there for the Christmas dinner. 

Children in the UK every Christmas write to Santa Claus also known as Father Christmas regarding their Christmas wishes. 

The traditional Christmas Pudding is a very important part of Christmas to many people from the UK, because it is a very old tradition. It is tradition to put small treasures inside the pudding, which is very alike the Danish tradition with hiding a nut inside the desert. The finder of the treasures is rewarded with a small gift and traditionally said good luck. 

Another, if you ask me, very sweet tradition that has been invented by the British people, which is by now a Christmas tradition all over the world, is hanging up a mistletoe - usually you hang it up in the door, which alows you to kiss the person, who is standing underneath it.