• There are some Christmas traditions in the UK that might confuse people from the US.
• Every Christmas, families gather to watch pantomimes or meet their school friends at the pub.
• They also eat Yorkshire puddings, mince pies, Christmas pudding, and Christmas cake.

Christmas in the United Kingdom differs slightly from celebrations in America and elsewhere around the world.

People who celebrate Christmas in the UK have slightly different traditions than those who live in the US. From what is traditionally served at a Christmas Day feast to festive activities and childhood traditions, families across the pond have their own unique and quirky ways of celebrating the holidays.

Here are 18 British Christmas traditions that might surprise you.

Pantomimes, or "pantos," are plays performed around Christmastime in the UK.

Pantos are humorous, slapstick entertainment for the whole family, often featuring men dressed in drag. They are sometimes based on a famous fairy tale or story, like "Cinderella," "Peter Pan," or "The Wizard of Oz." 

Pantomimes rely on specific tropes. For example, there's often a villain who will sneak up on the protagonist intermittently throughout the play. It's then the role of the audience to scream, "He's behind you!" to the main character while he or she struggles to figure out what's going on.

Yorkshire puddings are perfect with gravy, but people outside the UK may have never heard of them.

A traditional British roast dinner wouldn't be complete without Yorkshire puddings filled with Bisto or homemade gravy. Yorkshire puddings — not to be confused with sweet puddings — are made of eggs, flour, and milk or water.

After they're cooked in hot oil in the oven, they end up with a distinct hole in the middle. They closely resemble what Americans know as popovers.

While Yorkshire puddings are commonplace at Sunday dinners throughout the year, they're also eaten at Christmastime, though some argue they have no place on a Christmas plate.

Santa Claus is referred to as "Father Christmas."

While some do refer to old Saint Nick as Santa Claus in the UK, it is widely accepted that Father Christmas is his more traditionally British name.

"Santa Claus" is seen as an Americanism, and The Telegraph reported that even the British National Trust said that "Santa Claus should be known as 'Father Christmas' in stately homes and historic buildings because the name is more British."

British children hang Christmas stockings at the ends of their bed.

In America, Christmas stockings are hung by the fireplace with care. However, some British children hang their stockings at the ends of their beds for Father Christmas to fill up while they're sleeping. 

Christmas Eve is a time for school-friend reunions.

Thanksgiving weekend is seen as an opportunity in the United States for students to reunite with friends from high school or middle school. In the UK, it's a tradition for school friends to come together on Christmas Eve, often at the local bar or pub.

Christmas pudding is a traditional British dessert popular during the holiday season.

A Christmas pudding is a dense fruit cake often made weeks or even months in advance. This time allows the dried fruit to soak up alcohol that's regularly poured onto the cake in the weeks before it's consumed.

On Christmas, the cake is set alight and then topped with a sauce of brandy butter or rum butter, cream, lemon cream, ice cream, custard, or sweetened béchamel. It is also sometimes sprinkled with caster or powdered sugar.

For many years, Queen Elizabeth II even gifted each member of her staff a Christmas pudding from Tesco.

Another dessert of choice is Christmas cake, a rich fruit cake covered with marzipan and icing.

While fruit cake is certainly a polarizing dessert wherever you are, Brits seem to make it a little better with thick, sweet white icing. Oftentimes, Christmas cake also comes topped with festive holly decorations. 

Mince pies are pastries filled with dried fruits and spices that are eaten at Christmas.

The BBC reported that the first-known mince-pie recipe dates back to an 1830s-era English cookbook. By the mid-17th century, people reportedly began associating the small pies with Christmas.

At the time, they were traditionally filled with pork or other kinds of meat, sage, and other spices. Nowadays, the pies are filled with dried fruits and sugar powder.

British Christmas desserts are often enjoyed with brandy butter.

The perfect accompaniment to Christmas pudding and mince pies, brandy butter consists of butter and sugar beaten together before brandy is added. Rum butter is an alternative.

The result is still butter-like in consistency, and it's served cold alongside desserts. Americans might know it as "hard sauce."

Brits say "Happy Christmas" instead of "Merry Christmas."

You might remember a scene from the first "Harry Potter" movie in which Ron says, "Happy Christmas, Harry!" While this may sound strange to an American, saying "Happy Christmas" is commonplace in the UK, as opposed to "Merry Christmas." 

Christmas crackers are cardboard tubes wrapped in brightly colored paper and twisted at each end that two people pull for a fun surprise.

Christmas crackers are often pulled at the start of the meal, and the paper hats found inside are worn throughout the meal. Also inside each cracker is a "banger," which makes a loud pop when the cracker is pulled, a joke, and a small prize.

The jokes are usually cheesy and festive. For example: "Why did Santa's helper go to the doctor? Because he had low elf esteem!" 

However, be sure not to pack them if you're traveling to or from the UK on an airplane — they're not permitted to go through TSA in carry-on luggage.

"Top of the Pops" is a television special featuring performances of the year's most popular songs.

On Christmas, the BBC usually runs a holiday special of the since-retired show "Top of the Pops," which features performances from the year's most popular musicians.

The program ran weekly from 1964 until 2006, when it was canceled. People were so upset that the BBC decided to keep the Christmas special, which airs late in the morning on December 25.

Millions of people watch the King's annual televised Christmas Day speech every year.

Every year, families gather to watch the royal Christmas address, informally known as the Queen's or King's speech.

The Telegraph reported that the first Christmas address was 251 words long, but Queen Elizabeth II later came to average 656 words in each speech. It is often one of the most-watched television programs on Christmas Day in the UK.

Christmas commercials are as talked-about as Super Bowl commercials are in the United States.

While Super Bowl commercials are highly scrutinized in the US, Brits pay just as close attention to Christmas commercials.

Not only is the John Lewis ad, or "advert," a Christmas tradition, but almost every supermarket and clothing brand tries to get in on the buzz with a talked-about Christmas commercial.

Brits also anticipate which song will become the annual "Christmas No. 1" single.

The British "Christmas No. 1" has been a tradition for over half a century. Starting in 1952, the top song on the British singles chart has been a coveted spot every Christmas. Christmas No. 1 alums include The Beatles, Queen, Ed Sheeran, and more.

While some Christmas No. 1s have indeed been Christmas songs — "Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid II in 1989, for example — they don't have to be.

School nativity plays are a popular tradition in UK primary schools.

While religious elementary schools in the United States may put on nativity plays, they are arguably much more popular and part of the culture in Britain.

In the popular British Christmas movie "Love Actually," the characters even attend a Christmas nativity play.

Brits take advantage of after-Christmas sales on Boxing Day.

Boxing Day is typically called British Black Friday, but there are some differences between the holidays. Boxing Day, which is a public holiday in the UK, falls the day after Christmas and has a rich cultural history in Great Britain.

Originating in the mid-1600s, the day was traditionally a day off for servants. On this day, servants would receive a "Christmas Box," or gift, from their master. The servants would then return home on Boxing Day to give "Christmas Boxes" to their families.

In the UK, it can be bad luck to keep your decorations up for more than 12 days after Christmas.

Another difference between US and UK Christmas customs comes after all of the festivities have ended. 

In the UK, it's tradition to take down your tree and decorations 12 days after Christmas — known as Twelfth Night — to avoid bad luck in the new year.

In the Anglican tradition, Twelfth Night, or Epiphany Eve, is the day before Epiphany, which celebrates the coming of the Magi to baby Jesus and marks the end of the 12 days of Christmas. 

• Alex Teo, 36, left his corporate job to take over his family's joss paper business.
• The journey has not been easy in modern Singapore, where religious affiliations are declining.
• Teo's career goal is to reinvent the traditional business for the younger generation.

The latest smartphone, a three-story villa, and a private jet. Alex Teo has sold it all — for the dead.

Teo, 36, is the third-generation owner of Ban Kah Hiang Trading, one of Singapore's oldest joss paper businesses. They sell incense sticks, joss papers, and paper effigies — or paper replicas of real-life objects — which are designed to be burned as part of Chinese ancestral worship outside homes and in temples.

His grandfather opened the shop in the 1950s before his father took over in the early 1990s.

But it's an increasingly tough business to run in Singapore, where religious affiliations are waning. Many joss paper business owners of his father's generation have closed down because their kids did not want to take over, he said.

So, at 28, he stepped up. "I thought it would be a pity if I were not to continue it," he told Business Insider.

Now, he's on a mission to reinvent the traditional business for the new generation.

He had no interest at first

During traditional Chinese festivals, believers in Chinese folk religion burn joss paper — also known as "hell money" — as an offering to deities or ancestors.

Some also burn paper effigies of the latest products, such as cars and cameras, for their ancestors.

"The belief is that by burning these items, they will become 'real' in the afterlife and can also be used by their loved ones there," Terence Heng, a sociologist from the University of Liverpool, told BI.

Although Teo grew up helping at the shop, he was never very religious and had no interest in taking over. After graduating from college with a degree in business management, he worked for the public service and then an insurance company, assessing medical claims.

But things changed in 2016 when his dad got sick. His parents, then in their late 50s, asked him whether he could take over.

"I thought, 'Should I give up my corporate job? But I would have to give up some social life,'" he recalled, explaining that most people in the industry are significantly older, unlike the colleagues he had formed friendships with in his previous jobs.

Teo, who now has four kids, said his wife supported the career switch. "She thought that if I were to do my own business, I would have more time for her," he said.

He was also enticed by the thought of being his own boss.

"If I work hard in the corporate world, I can only wait for my bonus. But here, I'm the boss. If I work hard, I earn more money," he said.

The business of religion in modern society

Still, his journey has not been easy. Since taking over the business, Teo says he has seen retail sales fall as the younger generation drifts away from religious beliefs.

In Singapore, between 2010 and 2020, there was an increased proportion of residents with no religious affiliations across all age groups, data from the Singapore Department of Statistics showed. The same data showed that the percentage of Taoists and Buddhists — religious groups that use joss paper products — fell by 2.1% and 2.2%, respectively.

The decline in religious beliefs is part of a wider trend across the world. In the US, around 28% of adults described themselves as atheists, agnostics, or "nothing in particular" when asked about their religion — up from 16% in 2007, a 2024 Pew Research Center survey found.

Meanwhile, complaints about the environmental impact of burning joss paper have been simmering in Singapore.

In February, the Singapore government ran a second campaign to improve burning etiquette by encouraging people to pray in temples instead of outside their homes and to clean up after prayers, per a press release from the Alliance for Action.

Teo said that in the past, business at his family's retail shop would pick up during festive periods like Lunar New Year and the Hungry Ghost Festival but lull during other times of the year.

Running the retail shop also affected his parents, who worked over 10 hours daily and wanted to retire.

So, in May last year, Teo sold the retail shop to focus on wholesale distribution to companies and temples from their warehouse.

Teo saw it as an opportunity to invest more time in innovating their products to meet the needs of a changing consumer base.

"We had to think about how we can prolong tradition and culture to fit into the current modern mindset," he said. "If we were to continue to sell the traditional way like my dad did, I don't think we can be sustainable."

Keeping up with the times

In 2023, Teo partnered with his close friend, Chris Huang, who works in FinTech, to establish Base Genesis, a modern joss paper startup.

The pair invested a mid-five-figure amount to set up the business. While Teo focuses on operations, Huang oversees finances. They've since hired seven employees who work on branding, marketing, and livestream sales.

Their new business aims to innovate traditional joss paper products to appeal to younger generations — from packaging to sustainability.

Early this year, they were approached by MullenLowe, an advertising agency, to develop an eco-friendly hell note. The "Eco Hell Note" has a denomination with 48 zeroes — the largest possible denomination of money in the Chinese language. Instead of burning a stack of notes, burning one piece would suffice. Teo added that their note is ashless and smokeless, unlike traditional notes that create smog when burned.

"Burning joss paper is deep-rooted in our Chinese culture," he said, adding that a ban on the practice is unlikely to happen despite frequent complaints. "So we have to come out with a compromise to control the pollution and not become obsolete," he said.

Teo, who sources the paper from China, said the team had to experiment with different types of paper to determine which material is the most eco-friendly.

Developing such products doesn't come cheap. Although they have not decided on a price for their Eco Hell Note, their eco-friendly products are slightly more expensive. A pack of 500 "Eco-friendly Gentle Smoke Joss Sticks" costs 11.50 Singapore dollars, or $8.50. In comparison, a pack of 500 traditional sandalwood joss sticks costs SG$10.

"Everything takes time and money. You need to do a lot of research and development," said Huang. Each phase will come with additional costs, and it will take time for the company to grow, he added.

Their Eco Hell Note is not yet available for purchase, but the pair hopes that it will take off among younger Singaporeans once they launch it in time for Tomb Sweeping Day, a tradition for honoring ancestors in April next year.

Heng, who researches Chinese religions, said their eco-friendly products would be better received by the younger generation, who are more eco-conscious. While they are not as religious, they may keep up the practice out of filial piety.

"It does still align with the demands of ritualistic burning, where a physical object is transformed into a spiritual one. It's a really good first step in finding solutions to burning joss paper," he said.

Beyond innovation, Teo hopes to expand the business to the Western market, specifically to those who engage in these religious practices.

"We will maybe tweak the design to cater to their taste. For example, come out with a hell note in US dollars," he said.

These are more experimental ideas, Teo said. "But we are still keeping in mind the tradition and culture. That's what we are trying to preserve."