PalQ

Last night on Corrie (9-month delay on Canadian TV) Jack the bettor and better half of cranky Vera was having a pint in the Rovers on Christmas Day - or at least i believe it was - are pubs in England open on Christmas Day? I know restaurants probably could be, but pubs? And on Boxing Day too?
Just curious - and just love Coronation Street! My favorite TV show.

alanRow

For a couple of hours typically though gastropubs & restaurants MAY be open longer if they are offering Christmas Lunch - but you'll have to prebook for that

PalQ

Would have never thought they would be...interesting...thought Corrie was perhaps just taking license in it. Thanks.

flanneruk

Not all of them are open: non-tourist city centre pubs and some non-touristy village ones close all day Xmas Day.

But in mainstream Britain, it was long a crucial part of the ritual that the blokes got back from the pub just as the spuds and sprouts had boiled away to mush and the turkey was beginning to burn.

Vital social lubricant. Gave the wife an excuse to pick a fight before everybody else did.

More importantly, in much of Britain it was THE occasion where teenage boys, from about 14 (whatever the law said) joined their dad and uncles or neighbours for a pint in the pub.

audere_est_facere

My local opens inmmediately after Christmas morning mass and stays open till about 2pm.

Very very few will be open in the evening.

As Flanneur says, it is a way of getting the men in the house out from under the women's feet while they get on with putting lumps in the gravy and drinking sherry.

PatrickLondon

It's only relatively recently that everything started closing for Christmas Day (say, within the last 40 years). I can remember taking a bus to go to Christmas lunch with relatives.

walkinaround

avoid pre-booked xmas lunches in pubs (even decent pubs). these are usually awful and very poor value. they are a british institution running from several weeks before xmas right through to the day. the ingredients of the typical british xmas lunch:

1 xmas cracker

3 inexperienced polish waiters convinced by pub owners to give "posh" service that they clearly cannot manage to achieve

1 fixed menu with 3 or 4 choices for each course. the fixed price is about 4x what you should be paying for the food on offer.

1 fatty starter straight from the fryer but with posh names like "Feuilletes d'asperges"

1 main that is far from homemade.

1 forgettable dessert from a small selection of choices with names like "Berry Clafouti"

skip it unless you want to experience why so many britons are obsessed with moving to spain or france.

Mucky

Christmas day is the only day of the year that the landlord buys me a pint. I get them the rest of the year.



As previously said, the local pub will sometimes open for a few hours at lunch time, especially if the pub is at the center of the community.

But I agree both food and service are often of limited quality, but even the regular staff deserve Christmas day off with their families if they so choose.

Muck

audere_est_facere

Quite a lot of pubs will have a Christmas lunch for local penisioners, paid for by the charity bottle (well my local does this).

This will mean that there will be loads of steaming pissed old ladies and a few old geezers, all in paper hats, singing Vera Lynn songs and eating boiled to death brussels.

Any male under 60 that happens to be passing will be flirted into insanity by old ladies with bingo wings.

It's the highlight of the year. I can't wait until I'm old enough.

flanneruk

You know there really is something more ghastly than today's pensioners singing Vera Lynn.

It's the thought of the Hen Party generation singing "So here it is, Merry Christmas" and the Birdie Song in a couple of decades or so, while trying to snog barmen and find their missing false teeth at the same time.

Suddenly, that house in Umbria gets a lot more appealing.

Dukey

Gee, and from reading the above I thought the "problem' with the whole thing was being waited on by people from Poland..who knew?

audere_est_facere

I’ve often wondered about this. Today’s pensioners sing songs from their youth – Vera Lynn, Joe Loss, Victor Sylvester etc.

So when I’m 70 will I be going to tea dances to be serenaded by Pretty Vacant and The Ace Of Spades? Also will the yoof of then think them as poofy and sedate as we do about the coffin-dodger’s music now?

I am looking forward to seeing 70 year olds doing robot-dancing, pogoing and maybe doing that rowing dance. While pissed. In paper hats.

flanneruk

Now Umbria doesn't look far enough away.

Any nice cottages in Penang? Phnom Penh?

PalQ

there's some nice ones at Gitmo (Cuba)

audere_est_facere

Ah but Flanneur, remember we’ll all be having exactly the same idea. We will collectively be selling off our houses for millions and looking for somewhere cheap in the sun.

That means that Phnom Penh, Penang, and all points east will be full of bright pink wrinkly English oldies, all conga-ing up the main street on the way to Churchill’s Restaurant (having previously got steaming pissed in Lineker’s Bar) to order plates of curry and chips, washed down with pints of Tetleys and will then dance on the tables to the collected works of Duran Duran.

There will be bingo too.

You may wish to end it all now.

walkinaround

>>>>
I thought the "problem' with the whole thing was being waited on by people from Poland
<<<<

no problem...they provide the continental flair...as do the strangely french names of the bad food.

i work in several different offices and manage to get an invite to each office's xmas lunch. i start preparing my excuses in late october.

btw, to avoid confusion, these parties are held in the weeks leading up to xmas...not talking about xmas day which was the OP's concern.

PatrickLondon

One day, there'll be wrinklies throwing each other glares and tuts over whose turn it is on Grand Theft Bathchair, or who wants to watch Pimp My Zimmer. And since they'll all have been deaf for decades, the racket will be impossible. But by then, international travel will have reverted to sailing ships, so tourism will be entirely virtual and there'll be peace and quiet in Westminster Abbey.

audere_est_facere

i work in several different offices and manage to get an invite to each office's xmas lunch. i start preparing my excuses in late october.>>>>>>>>>>&g t;>

Ditto.

Audere's rule of Office Parties: The more straight-laced the organisation the more Bacchanalian the office party.

This year I am specifically looking forward to going to the Police one, our barrister's one and the Magistrates one.

I wouldn't go to one run by TGIF for a pension.

Incidentally has anyone ever really photocopied their arse at one of these dos? I think it's an urban myth. Or am I just too heavy to risk it?

Kate

We had a freelancer do this. He broke the copier.

audere_est_facere

So...and purely hypothetically .....If I had a "friend" who weighed around 15 stone....you wouldn't recommend it?

My "friend" would quite like to know.