Simon Hoggart's week: the new Christmas traditions

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/dec/28/christmas-traditions

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1 The Boxing Day non-hunt. It's a magnificent sight, as the huntsmen in scarlet gather outside the old half-timbered tavern with their stirrup cups, hounds yelping and yowling with anticipation, the horses' nostrils seeming to snort smoke like steam trains – a scene immortalised in so many hunting prints and table mats. Then through the frosty air comes the brass bellow of the horn, and with a clattering of hooves on cobbles and cheers from the onlookers, the hunt races off, over hedges and ditches, after nothing much in particular.

Until, that is, the horn sounds "gone to earth!" the ancient signal that an RSPCA inspector has found safe refuge in a local radio station where he is to take part in today's top topical discussion: "Hunting: grand old British tradition or sadistic assault on innocent animals?"

As it happens, the grand old British tradition is having it both ways: hunting is illegal, but it still continues, only rarely checked. And the urban foxes round us have learned how to open the allegedly locked food waste containers provided by the council, so re-igniting the evolution v education, or nature v nurture, debate.

2 Going to church once a year, but in vast numbers. In the past, it was traditional for people to queue through the night for the sales. Now the sales are permanent, people queue to get into church. They had started lining up for the Nine Lessons and Carols at King's College, Cambridge, before 5am on Christmas Eve, though the service didn't begin till 3pm, and you had to leave people to keep your place in the queue. Apparently there were no fights over queue-jumping, but it came close.

We were with my sister's family in Norwich, and it is always a joy to go to the mighty cathedral there. But you do need to get there early for the 10.30 Holy Communion. Which takes me to the next tradition.

3 The relevant sermon, in our case preached by the Right Rev Graham James, bishop of Norwich, who was on the shortlist for archbishop of Canterbury. It was a good sermon, based on various concepts of "wrapped" – Baby Jesus in swaddling clothes, God's love enfolding us all, and so forth. Then suddenly he was onto the origins of Christmas wrapping paper, which was apparently at a shop in Kansas in the last century, where they ran out of brown paper and used the decorative tissue used for lining envelopes instead. In the old days we'd have had something a touch more spiritual, and I am old enough to remember vicars who threatened their congregation with the fires of hell.

Now we get a PowerPoint presentation without the PowerPoint.

4 Not watching television. The audience figures for even the biggest shows were at record lows, partly because some people will have recorded them for later, partly because we all get DVDs and box sets these days, and frankly Flight Of The Conchords is more fun than various EastEnders yelling: "Cut it, slag!"

In what seems to have been a desperate attempt to improve ratings, the Queen appeared in 3D this year. It would have been great if she had fired a party popper at the camera. People in sitting rooms throughout her realm would have instinctively ducked.

5 Picking holes in Downton Abbey. As usual I am sure that every visual detail was correct, and that in the Scottish scenes the laird would have remembered to wear his sporran the right way round, but I am also certain that between the wars nobody ever said they had been on a "steep learning curve".

However, I will now get triumphant emails, pointing out that the words "steep", "learning" and "curve" were all in common usage, so missing the point entirely.

I have to say that – possible spoiler alert if you taped it and haven't got round to watching – that I felt manipulated by the shock ending. When an actor wants out of a series, there are better ways of doing it. In Monarch Of The Glen, Archie simply disappeared to Australia, and in each succeeding episode there were fewer mentions of him and no explanations. And Hector, written out because Richard Briers was fed up with months of cold and midges, at least had the grace to die in a bizarre freak accident.

6 Accidents. The horrible one on the M6 destroyed Christmas Day for thousands of people who weren't part of it. We were held up going home for a very long time by a much lesser crash; when we crawled past the scene there was one small vehicle, scarcely damaged, guarded by a police car and many cones, blocking a whole lane.

It would have been simple to force it to one side, but there is no sight that gladdens the heart of the various highway authorities more than a majestic queue of cars, stationary for miles and miles, as several hundred people realise that their plans for the day are as shattered as Ozymandias's statue.

7 Electronic gifts. Try giving a child wooden building blocks now, and they'll look at you as fondly as if you'd given them the Christmas number of the Journal of Quantum Physics. Instead they get iPads, iPhones and Kindle Fires. This means to that instead of doing Christmas shopping before the day, and sales shopping afterwards, everyone can now do it on the day itself, instead of playing board games.

I also learned to play Fruit Ninja on an iPad. It is quite hypnotic, and I hope one day to get past 100 points. I remembered that David Cameron admits to being an addict.

I wonder if it helps him in his work. "Great, just destroyed a pineapple! Reminds me, shall we send those grenades to the Syrian rebels?"