How to talk about Christmas traditions with a focus on used to
2025-12-14 26 min
Description & Show Notes
Christmas traditions, childhood memories, and a simple grammar tip that can transform your English — all in one festive episode. From real candles on German Christmas trees to British stockings, puddings, and Christmas card chaos, the 3 English Experts share laughs, culture, and language. Plus, learn the real difference between “used to” and “be used to” so you can talk about your past (and present) with confidence.
- Introduction to the podcast and Christmas theme (0:03)
- Purpose of the podcast and grammar focus: “Used to” (0:12)
- Explanation of “Used to” with examples (1:00)
- English vs. German Christmas present traditions (5:20)
- Rebecca’s childhood memories of Christmas morning (6:34)
- Stockings, Santa, and Christmas rituals (7:39)
- Christmas Eve in England and Dave’s snooker table story (9:35)
- Christmas trees and decorations: past and present (11:23)
- Rebecca’s sustainable Christmas tree: Horst von Forst (12:03)
- German Christmas lunch traditions (13:28)
- English Christmas dinner and “trimmings” (14:42)
- Explaining “stuffing” and Christmas desserts (15:33)
- Christmas Pudding traditions and superstitions (16:20)
- Making Christmas pudding and shared traditions (17:53)
- Christmas Cards and cultural differences (18:39)
- The importance of Christmas cards in the UK (19:59)
- Christmas Card messages, display, and changing habits (20:47)
- The UK card industry and the “Dog Christmas Card” tradition (22:17)
- Golden Nugget: “Used to” vs. “Be used to” (22:51)
- Website updates (https://www.threeenglishexperts.com), new offers, and Christmas farewell (24:38)
Would you like to work with us?
Rebecca: https://rebeccadeacon.com
Birgit: https://birgitkasimirski.de
Dave: https://businessenglishacademy.de
Weihnachtstraditionen, Kindheitserinnerungen und ein einfacher Grammatiktipp, der Ihr Englisch verändern kann – alles in einer festlichen Folge. 🎄 Von echten Kerzen auf deutschen Weihnachtsbäumen bis hin zu britischen Strümpfen, Puddings und Weihnachtskartenchaos – die 3 English Experts teilen Lachen, Kultur und Sprache. Außerdem lernen Sie den wirklichen Unterschied zwischen *used to* und *be used to*, damit Sie selbstbewusst über Ihre Vergangenheit (und Gegenwart) sprechen können.
- Einführung in den Podcast und das Thema Weihnachten (0:03)
- Zweck des Podcasts und grammatikalischer Schwerpunkt: „Used to“ (0:12)
- Erklärung von „Used to“ mit Beispielen (1:00)
- Englische vs. deutsche Traditionen beim Bescheren von Weihnachtsgeschenken (5:20)
- Rebeccas Kindheitserinnerungen an den Weihnachtsmorgen (6:34)
- Strümpfe, Weihnachtsmann und Weihnachtsrituale (7:39)
- Heiligabend in England und Daves Snooker-Tisch-Geschichte (9:35)
- Weihnachtsbäume und Dekorationen: früher und heute (11:23)
- Rebeccas nachhaltiger Weihnachtsbaum: Horst von Forst (12:03)
- Deutsche Traditionen beim Weihnachtsessen (13:28)
- Englisches Weihnachtsessen und „Beilagen” (14:42)
- Erklärung von „Füllung” und Weihnachtsdesserts (15:33)
- Traditionen und Aberglauben rund um den Weihnachtspudding (16:20)
- Zubereitung von Weihnachtspudding und gemeinsame Traditionen (17:53)
- Weihnachtskarten und kulturelle Unterschiede (18:39)
- Die Bedeutung von Weihnachtskarten in Großbritannien (19:59)
- Weihnachtskartenbotschaften, Ausstellung und sich ändernde Gewohnheiten (20:47)
- Die britische Kartenindustrie und die Tradition der „Hundeweihnachtskarten” (22:17)
- Golden Nugget: „Used to“ vs. „Be used to“ (22:51)
- Website-Updates (https://www.threeenglishexperts.com), neue Angebote und Weihnachtsverabschiedung (24:38)
Transcript
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, welcome to The 3 English Experts.
I'm Dave, I'm Rebecca, and I'm Birgit, and welcome to this episode.
The 3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey.
Hi, everybody.
Welcome back.
And once again, it's Christmas.
It's our Christmas episode.
Today, we're going to talk about Christmas traditions, some of our English Christmas traditions, that's difficult to say, and Birgit's German traditions, maybe.
And when we talk about things that we did often in the past, maybe our childhood or your traditions, you can use used to.
So, this is a nice kind of fairly easy past tense you can use.
So, Birgit, our grammar queen is going to just quickly explain how do we use used to.
Yeah, hello, everybody.
Yes, that's an interesting phrase.
Some people don't use it, not yet, and that's a very nice learning.
Obviously, most people know the verb to use, benutzen, but tense, it's something you can express something which you did in the past, but you don't do.
Maybe now it's stopped.
Just a simple example, I used to smoke.
So, it's always followed by the infinitive, and it will always be the past tense of used, used to do something.
And with the Christmas, that's obviously a very logical way for us to bring this up now, because we were thinking of, as Rebecca said, sharing some maybe childhood memories, what we did when we were children and celebrated Christmas in our original families.
And we talked about this earlier, you might not very often use this in the negative form, but it exists.
So, you could say, I didn't use to smoke, if you smoked now, maybe, but now you stopped, you started smoking, but I didn't use to do that in the past.
So, tricky here for learners.
Of course, it's the negative form, didn't, and then the use, obviously, in the infinitive form, plus to another infinitive.
So, it needs a little training, and it's good to listen to this and repeat this, and then you can use it yourself.
Also, another form, instead of saying, I used to do something, you recall a situation in the past, and you talk about this, you could say, we would sit down together as a family, or we used to sit down as a family.
We said that might be a bit more regional, maybe American, but you will probably hear this when you listen a lot to native people.
So, what, again, question, what did I use to do when I was a child in my family, or what did we use to have?
We used to have real candles on the Christmas tree, and we used to, Rebecca's shaking her head in amazement.
Did you have a fire extinguisher nearby, or a bucket of water?
And that's interesting, never ever did we have something like that.
My father, no, we didn't, I grew up, me and my sister, we grew up, that was the most normal thing, to have real candles on the Christmas tree, and my father would take out, and my mother, the Christmas stuff, on the morning of the Christmas Eve, so not earlier, and we would put up the tree on that morning.
Obviously, he would look out carefully, no, no twig above any of the candle holders, but never ever was anything like a fire extinguisher, or a bucket of water, and nothing, touch wood, knock wood, nothing ever happened.
Yeah, maybe that's, and then we used to have the same dinner, or every Christmas, so we used to have a real certain tradition in our family, yeah.
And what was that?
What did you eat?
My father brought that back from, he was from, from Breslau, and we used to have Kassler, and used to have Schlesisch sausage, different types of sausage, and sauerkraut, and potatoes, and gravy, delicious, the way my mother did it, yeah, and yeah, that's my childhood memory.
We used to go to church, and we used to wait for, to be called into the living room with the, with the tree lit up, first time, Christmas Eve, we didn't see the candles burn, and so that's completely different to what people do now, so you can switch on the lights, yeah, a long time before Christmas, yeah.
Dave, what did you used to do?
I think it's, oh, hello, by the way, everybody.
Merry Christmas is coming.
So what did we used to do?
I think it's important to point out, Birgit, listeners that don't know, is that in England, we receive the Christmas presents, or the kids receive the Christmas presents, on Christmas Day, which is the 25th.
As far as I know, in Germany, it's the 24th, right, isn't it, when they used to, they get the presents?
In the, yeah, in the evening, yeah, Christmas Eve, yeah.
Which I find really cruel, that they get in the evening.
Why can't they get them in the morning, because then they have more time to play?
We have to go to bed, here's your presents, right, go to bed now.
You just got your presents, and then you have to go to bed.
That's the first time I heard anything like that, from English people, of course, but nobody ever complained about that.
We do play, we did play in the night.
The night start, maybe for children,
six o'clock or seven o'clock, so that's, you can stay up longer, that's special,
and then you go to bed, you are really thrilled, that was so exciting, and then next morning,
you sleep better, maybe, yeah, okay, and then you look forward to getting up again,
morning play all day, yeah, I don't know, Rebecca, it was the kind of waiting up for Santa thing,
but I suppose, yeah, because my parents were always like, oh, they got to go to sleep,
because they were waiting for the presents under the tree, and then we'd be like,
awake until whatever time, yes, and then getting up really early, like five o'clock.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true.
Yeah, so I used to go into, I've got an older brother, and I used to go into his room,
and I'd be like, can we get up yet, and then he reckons, and now he said, that's not true,
I used to come in your room, because you were always asleep, I don't know, I remember,
I used to go into his room, but he says, no, I used to come in your room, because you were
always asleep, and we used to have to wait, because my parents used to say, not before
five, or something, or not before six, yeah, so we used to have to wait until it was time to go.
But they will remember.
They were like, oh, not before six.
Mum used to have to get up, and put the turkey in the oven, so it was always really early, she used to get out of bed to put the turkey in the oven, because it used to cook for hours, so we used to get up early, I think.
Oh yeah, definitely, yeah, 100%.
Did your parents used to leave anything out for Christmas, and Father Christmas, and the reindeer?
Yes, yeah, before we went to bed, we used to hang a stocking, I don't know, do you do that in Germany, Birgit, do you have this stocking thing?
No, we don't do that, but we have the St. Martin, and then you put the boots out, and that's similar, and then you see all the American movies, and the children wonder about, what about the reindeer, and the chimney, and the stockings?
Yeah, the stockings, we used to put the stockings out, so you have these special Christmas stockings, they're like, and we used to hang them on the fireplace, and then we used to leave mince pies for Santa, I think carrot for the reindeer, and in our house, it was rum.
I heard rum, we had sherry.
Yeah, you see, your Santa liked sherry, our Santa liked rum.
I always say, oh, they're another house, he has sherry.
Were they the fathers, maybe?
Oh, Birgit, don't say, there may be children listening, there may be children listening, stop it.
I don't think so, very bright children, yeah.
Birgit, we're just smiling at Christmas, madam.
The talented, gifted ones, oh, are you listening?
Yeah, and then we used to go to bed, and then you used to have stocking presents,
so they were always the first presents that you opened, they were like little
stocking fillers, they were called stocking fillers, and they're just like little gifts
that used to be in the stocking that you would open first, and then we used to go
downstairs, sometimes we opened those in our bedroom, so that sometimes they would
be at the end of your bed, even, and then you used to open those.
I think I used to drag them into my parents' room, oh my god, and they were like, surprised.
Go back to bed, it's not five o'clock.
And then we used to go downstairs all together and open the rest after breakfast or during breakfast, yeah.
Did you do anything on Christmas Eve at all then, or was that just waiting, or?
Dave, did you used to do any, had any?
Not really.
There was a midnight mass, we had midnight mass, so going to church at midnight, but that was it.
There was nothing, it was saying Christmas, yeah, Christmas Day in the morning when everything happened for us.
It was Christmas presents, we used to get up early, as Rebecca said, and open up the presents, and I remember one year where I woke up really excited to go down and wrap my presents, and I missed the big present, which was right in front of me, and I missed it because I went straight to the tree to open up the presents that were underneath the tree.
Guess what it was?
A mini snooker table.
Oh my goodness.
And I didn't see it.
How did you miss a snooker table?
How could you, I know, how could you miss a snooker table?
It wasn't one of the big, normal, English snooker tables, but it was a...
I think we used to have one of those.
Probably, yeah, about two metres.
It was about two, yeah, two metres by a metre and a half, maybe, I don't know, something like that.
So it was quite a big one, but I missed it.
And my mum and dad just...
No, that was a normal table.
And they were so excited to show you, and Dave's...
Yeah, I went straight to the Christmas tree and the things underneath, yeah, missed it.
It wasn't wrapped, maybe, it wasn't wrapped.
It wasn't wrapped, was it?
I can't remember that much detail, I just remember missing the table somehow, I don't know.
To explain to anybody who doesn't know, for Sheffield people, a snooker table is a very special present, because the World Championship of Snooker is held in Sheffield every year at the Crucible.
So for Sheffield people, snooker tables are quite special.
It wasn't a Crucible-sized snooker table, because that wouldn't fit in the house, probably.
Any candles on the tree, or electric light?
We had little electric lights.
Electric, yeah, electric lights.
And not a real tree, we didn't normally have any real tree, we often had an artificial tree.
Plastic tree.
Mum couldn't deal with all the needles dropping off and hoovering all the time.
And are you carrying on this tradition now, with the tree?
Yeah, but not a real tree.
With a plastic, or no?
Yeah.
No, okay, yeah.
We don't do the IKEA thing at the 6th of January, everyone's throwing out there.
That's a real German thing as well, isn't it?
Throw the tree out.
Do we have to name another brand, or...
You never know, they might sponsor us, so we can keep trying.
Actually, this year, I've decided we're going to have a sustainable tree.
I found this company, and I've ordered a tree.
You rent a tree from them, the tree arrives in a pot, it's planted in a pot, and then you look after it until, I think something like the 3rd of January, and then they come and pick it up, and they take it back, and they plant it again.
Great.
And then you get the same one next year, so you can give it a name.
The same one?
I don't know.
You don't believe this, no.
I was like, oh, we're going to put a chip in it, so we know that it's our tree, we're going to scan it.
But yes, so we've given it a name.
We're calling it Horst.
Horst.
Horst von Forst.
And I knew somebody, Horst Leuchter, who was really called this.
So it's Horst von Forst.
I think the Irish are like, why have they called it that?
They have no idea why I've called it that.
So Horst von Forst is supposed to be arriving the 1st week of December.
The problem is, of course, you can't choose what he looks like.
You have to take whatever is came with, children or anything, you get what you get.
No, you get what you give him.
So he might be a funny shape.
We know he should be about five foot.
Yeah, wonderful.
Let's see, Horst.
I'll give you an update on Horst von Forst.
So what did you used to eat?
I'm a big foodie.
Birgit, what did you used to eat on Christmas Day?
We had our Christmas lunches or like Christmas dinner.
Do you have anything in Germany?
We used to have a Christmas Day lunch, and that was also white cloth on the table, a glass of white wine for my parents.
I think that was special.
They didn't do that.
They didn't used to have that white cloth during a normal time of the year.
And put an Oberschenkel was something we had.
A real turkey.
Part of the turkey, but not the whole thing.
The thigh, the leg and thigh.
Yeah, that was something special.
Or maybe roulades or something.
So a Sunday, a proper Sunday, a roast for lunch.
And on the 26th also, I think that was two days.
Nice food.
My mother...
Feasted.
Feasting, yeah.
Feasting, definitely.
Feasting.
What about you?
The Rotkraut, Sauerkraut.
Can't do without the kraut, yeah.
And proper dessert, yeah.
But no starters usually.
Did you used to have several course meals in your house, Rebecca?
Yeah, although I think we scrapped the starters because nobody then made it through the dinner.
It was too much food.
So generally we used to just go straight into turkey.
It's always turkey.
I think there was one year.
I don't know if it was bird flu or something happened in the UK.
There was something...
Do you remember this, Dave?
It's probably like 10 or 15 years ago.
And there was some sort of turkey crisis in UK.
And we all...
We had beef.
And I remember everybody was so miserable.
They were like, I can't believe we're having beef.
Not the real thing.
Yeah, it was really weird.
I can't remember what it was.
Whether it was avian flu or there was something.
And there was a shortage of turkeys.
And everybody had beef.
But normally we always have turkey and the usual trimmings.
We call it the trimmings.
So the trimmings are potatoes, brussel sprouts, stuffing, all those kind of things.
We've got to explain stuffing because that's...
Although the Germans do have Guldung, don't they?
Stuffing stuffed goose or...
Yeah.
But what do you stuff it with?
What do you stuff it with?
That was very Sheffield.
What do you stuff it with?
Alcohol, like, I don't know, chestnuts.
Right.
Chestnuts, apple, things like that.
Our stuffing is herbs, isn't it?
Herbs and breadcrumbs and stuff.
It's breadcrumbs.
It depends.
There's different types.
But it's normally herbs, breadcrumbs, sage and parsley and just like that.
Did you have dessert then, Rebecca?
So the Christmas pudding?
Yes.
Christmas pudding.
Although I don't like Christmas pudding, but...
I don't like it, but...
My parents have Christmas pudding.
The white sauce, the rum sauce.
Very traditional, but nobody likes it.
Mum and dad like it.
They said to me this year, because they're coming to Ireland for Christmas and they said, we'll bring the Christmas puddings.
And I'm like, Dad, we have Tesco here.
We don't need...
You can get your Christmas puddings here.
You don't need to bring them.
They used to transport it all to Germany.
So they used to arrive with Christmas puddings and all kinds of stuff.
So this year, it should be a bit easier.
Did you have the sixpence inside?
Did they hide the sixpence in your family?
Good question.
I don't remember.
Did we put money in the pudding?
Because that's a big tradition.
I have vague memories of that, like when I was really small.
I don't know.
Probably broke grandparents' teeth and they got cancelled.
I don't know.
And then what happens?
If whoever finds it, good luck for next year.
Good luck, yeah.
It's good luck, yeah.
You've killed your dentures, but you've got good luck.
I don't know.
It's a good question.
Did they set fire to your pudding?
No, not as I remember.
We used to set fire to the pudding.
So you pour alcohol and then everyone's sitting with the paper hats.
Caught fire.
I think I remember that when I was in England.
So they did that, set fire.
Did you spend Christmas in England, Birgit, when you lived there?
I went back for Christmas.
I remember.
But surely I was there then after and they had a proper Christmas.
So they wanted to show me.
And I think that, yeah, certainly I was watching or they showed me how to make a Christmas pudding because that's time consuming.
So it starts like four weeks before Christmas or something.
Yeah.
And then they set fire to it.
Yeah, definitely.
My mother-in-law, she makes her own puddings and she does them in November.
Middle of November, she makes the puddings and then they mature over a few weeks.
It's very difficult.
It's very complicated to make Christmas pudding.
There's like about a thousand ingredients.
The list, the page is ridiculous.
Who has all of these things?
There's no convenience.
Extremely complicated to make pudding.
I used to like the sauce.
Yeah.
The Christmas white, the brandy sauce or the white sauce.
Yeah.
That's what I used to eat and not the Christmas pie.
Yeah.
And I used to send the lip cologne to the people in England then because they used to like it.
Yes.
All the sorts of things.
Exchange what people didn't know.
And did you send Christmas cards as well?
Or is that's a British thing?
Is that an English thing?
Sending Christmas cards?
You mean from England to Germany?
No, no.
Or anybody.
Did you send any Christmas cards?
You mean before we went to England?
Did we used to send Christmas?
No, it's not such a big...
My mother, she used to either send cards and write letters and she used to call people really on a regular basis.
She used to remember, oh, I need to call this.
And then we were on the landline and you couldn't really move because the call was...
So she used to be standing there for an hour talking.
Yeah, calling people.
Yeah.
I remember that.
Yeah.
That was something that was...
And something else that was special.
My father used to order from Nuremberger Lipkuchen.
The whole box, the whole thing.
And then my mother used to hide that under the parents' bed.
And she used to take out, like, small bits every Sunday or when we...
For the Advent...
So you used to hide the Lipkuchen?
Yes.
Of course, we knew where they were.
She wouldn't know if we had taken something out.
So it used to come out bit by bit, only in small portions.
Yeah.
Very nice.
Sending cards was not really a German thing then.
It's not.
It's such huge business in the UK.
It's huge.
It's huge.
Yeah.
And we spend so much money on the Christmas card list.
It is ridiculous.
I'm hoping this year...
I don't know.
Now we're in Ireland.
I'm thinking I've got to send...
I used to send them back here.
Now I've got to send them back to Germany, to people there.
Oh, it's a lot.
Can't you do emails?
That's not the real thing.
No.
Oh, okay.
No, you need a card and it's noted who didn't send it.
When my parents arrive, the first thing my mom does, she'll look at the cards on the windowsill.
Oh, you've got one from him.
Uncles, oh yes.
Have you had auntie's card?
You've got the black book out, who hasn't?
Who did you get one from?
What are the messages?
Because that would be very German.
So I would write something personal in there.
So what do they write?
When you're writing a hundred cards, you don't have time for personal.
Some people don't.
They just write the name from Rebecca.
It's love.
Some of them are really limited and others tell a little bit of information, but a lot of it's just from Dave.
It is ridiculous.
It is ridiculous.
And then you've got to find a place to put them up in the house.
And they're always falling down.
Yeah.
We used to have these little strings going across the...
Do you not have that, Rebecca?
Strings across the wall.
In the kitchen and stuff.
Yeah.
And they were hung over.
They were sticking on the window, in the kitchen door and all sorts.
Do you know any English person who was not in this game, who just said, oh no, I'm not playing that game?
I think meanwhile, less and less people are doing it, actually, because the postage has got so expensive.
But some people...
I'm going home just before Christmas this year.
And my mom said, well, that'll make it easy.
People can give you their cards without posting them.
I know they will actually just come over and hand you a card, which is so weird.
It's hello.
So I'll come back with a pile of 10 cards or something for my family.
Yeah.
And how long are you keeping?
Will you throw them away or will you keep them?
I do recycle.
I cut off the back and I use them as notepad.
I do every year.
But I do try to recycle them.
My dad uses them when we play cards and we play a game of cards.
He used to write on cards.
The scores.
Yeah.
So it's all recycled.
All recycled.
Not an issue in Germany.
I can't remember any of this.
Yeah, but cards generally in the UK, it's big business.
There are multiple card stores.
Yeah.
You buy multi-pack, 20 in a pack.
They would last five years here.
20 in a pack.
Yeah.
I don't know.
It is a bit of a strange tradition, but yes.
I said to my husband last night, I was like, oh no, we haven't done the Christmas card.
Normally we take a picture of the dog and a photo of the dog and then he goes on a Christmas card.
He's on the Christmas card every year.
Yeah.
We haven't done it yet.
We're behind.
Yes.
Oh dear.
Hurry up.
Quick, quick.
The Golden Nugget.
As you heard, everybody, we used to a lot in our explanations of how we spent our Christmas times.
I hope you all enjoyed it.
Our Golden Nugget is explaining the difference between used to and something that is very similar.
Be used to doing something.
Okay.
For a simple example, I used to live in Germany.
So that's obviously in the past.
I used to live in Germany, as you heard before, but there is the phrase to be used to doing something.
So I moved to Spain about four years ago and now I'm used to living in Spain.
So in that time, I lived here, I settled down and now I enjoy, I know what it is like to live in Spain and that's what we use this phrase.
I'm used to living in Spain.
I'm used to doing something.
Okay.
Which means that you have got the routine, you know what you're doing now, everything's okay.
So you get used to it and then you are used to doing something.
So that's a little difference as well.
So this used to, talking about the past, I used to do something and used to living, like I said, here in Spain.
So that's the change that the routine that you get familiar and comfortable with something.
That is our Golden Nugget.
It's also one of the Golden Nuggets in our 50 Golden Nuggets.
So if you'd like to get the full 50, then sign up for our newsletter at our website and you'll get it for free.
And that's a very good mention from Dave, our website.
We have changed something on our website because we're going to have new offers from the new year.
Today is mid of December.
We're going to be back on the 5th of January.
A little, a small break and you'll find our offers online.
Something new will be there, like a conversation breakfast club.
You can join a conversation from next year with one of us on a regular basis, our monthly newsletter to get some tips and news about what's going on with us personally.
And yes, head over to our website 3englishexperts.com and we'll be back in January.
And thank you all for listening to us, to our episode and hope you're having a wonderful Christmas 2025.
Peaceful and quiet.
Are we going to sing?
Are we not?
No.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas to everybody.
Hopefully you'll be listening again.
Thanks.