The Twelve Days of Christmas
Whether it’s not decorating the tree until Christmas Eve, wearing comedy jumpers on December 25th, or toasting the Queen’s Speech with a sip of sweet sherry, every family has its own set of quirky and eccentric Christmas traditions … and our favourite stars are no exception. We were originally intending to ask a dozen top showbiz celebrities called Day to tell us about the origins of their own families’ much-loved Christmas customs, but we could only think of ten. One of them was dead and two others wouldn’t reply so, to fill up the page, we thought of a few other household names and asked them as well.
DARREN DAY Ex-serial love rat
“AT my house, we tie grandad up with a washing line and lock him him in the shed from Christmas Eve until Boxing Day. Our family have been tying up the eldest male member and putting them in the shed for Christmas for generations, and nobody can remember why the tradition started. It’s a bit of fun that everyone looks forward to all year, except grandad, obviously. I’m fully aware that one day it will be my turn to be tied up and put in the shed, and I only hope I’ll be able to meet that horrible ordeal with good humour and a twinkle in my eye.”
DAVID VAN DAY Ex-Dollar, ex-Guys’n’Dolls, ex-a-version-of-Bucks Fizz singer
“CHRISTMAS wouldn’t be Christmas in the Van Day household without us putting washingup liquid on our turkey. One Christmas when I was little, my mother accidentally filled the gravy boat with Fairy Liquid, and before we realised, we had all poured the bright green detergent on our dinners. As you can imagine, we all fell about laughing at mum’s daffy goof, and it was such a happy family memory that we’ve done it every year since. It wrecks the meal, and we have to throw it all away and have a Pot Noodle or beans on toast instead, but I think these traditions are worth keeping.”
GREEN DAY US pop group
“BEFORE we were famous, we couldn’t afford a real Christmas fairy, so we would draw straws to pick one of us to sit on top of the tree until twelfth night, when the decorations came down. Thanks to all the pop hits we’ve had over the intervening years, we could now afford to buy any number of Christmas fairies, but we still keep up our old tradition. Sure, the real thing would look just swell, but it simply wouldn’t be the same as having one of us up there with the top of the tree stuck up his fanny, which is what we Americans call an arse.”