Pump am y Penwythnos / Friday Five - Festive Special 🎄

Welsh General / Questions
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Helo bawb! I hope everyone is well?

Here’s a special festive edition of the Friday Five which isn’t on a Friday and won’t be just five questions! :laughing:

So if you’ve already had enough jingle bells then look away now. :see_no_evil:

  1. Go on, I know you want to, share with us your favourite Carol and your favourite non religious Christmas song.

  2. What’s the best festive experience you’ve ever had?

  3. Name a gift that you’re excited about giving

  4. Talking of gifts, what random item would you like to see under your tree this year (whether it fits or not)

  5. Go on, show us your decs.

  6. What’s on your Christmas dinner plate?

  7. Is it driving you nuts yet?

  8. Ban one Christmas song.

  9. Share with us a favourite tradition.

  10. Bring back a tradition from your childhood. :christmas_tree:

  11. What would your ideal Christmas be like?

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1. Go on, I know you want to, share with us your favourite Carol and your favourite non religious Christmas song.
In the bleak mid winter because it is suitably depressing. Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’ because it is suitably crazy.
2. What’s the best festive experience you’ve ever had?
This may sound like a cracked record because I have used a similar example before. Anyway, 35 years or so ago I went to New York to visit a friend. On Christmas day we caught a bus upstate into how you would imagine the USA decades earlier. The town we got out at was a single road with a telephone kiosk. About 90 secs after arriving a police patrol car turned up, police got out and started to quiz us who we were and why we were there. In the evening we went back to Manhattan and went to a squat in SoHo where half the people there were Welsh!
3. Name a gift that you’re excited about giving
The one that I have got to think about buying before Christmas day.
4. Talking of gifts, what random item would you like to see under your tree this year (whether it fits or not)
Forget the gift, I am not allowed to put up a tree!
5. Go on, show us your decs.
:blush: Not here
6. What’s on your Christmas dinner plate?
About five others, they are still in the cupboard waiting for Christmas day…
7. Is it driving you nuts yet?
Not completely
8. Ban one Christmas song.
‘Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree’. Whenever I hear it I just stare at the empty corner of my living room …
9. Share with us a favourite tradition.
Still giving the kids a Christmas stocking when they are asleep. They all live at home and are aged 28, 26, 24 and 18.
10. Bring back a tradition from your childhood.
:christmas_tree: - that is such a cruel question.
11. What would your ideal Christmas be like?
Sitting in an old stone cottage at the foot of a mountain but with the sea just in front. A large roaring open fire, soft cushioned sofa and a stomach full of turkey. Still singing the carols from the morning chapel service and waiting to go to the pub 50 metres away to have a drink. Proud of the snowman I built in the morning and the line of snowballs ready to playfully throw at passers-by. Watching the Christmas edition of Pobol y Cwm and understanding every word Kath spoke.

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Here’s a special festive edition of the Friday Five which isn’t on a Friday and won’t be just five questions! :laughing:

So if you’ve already had enough jingle bells then look away now. :see_no_evil:

1. Go on, I know you want to, share with us your favourite Carol and your favourite non religious Christmas song.

religious: I have one in mind, but can’t remember the name! It’s not quite an everyday one, although it is well known. Oh, maybe it’s the Shepherd’s Farewell. Learned it for a carol concert many years ago.

non-religious: Wizzard’s “I wish it could be Christmas Every Day”

2. What’s the best festive experience you’ve ever had?

The birth of our first child was only 7 days before Christmas, so that was a lovely early present.

3. Name a gift that you’re excited about giving

Sooty, Sweep and Sue (Soo?) glove puppets.

4. Talking of gifts, what random item would you like to see under your tree this year (whether it fits or not)

One of Santa’s helper’s has promised me a hand coffee grinder.

5. Go on, show us your decs.

No, I couldn’t really; not in front of all these people…

6. What’s on your Christmas dinner plate?

It’ll be turkey, but if I had my way it would be something different. But the family insists on turkey.

7. Is it driving you nuts yet?

For some reason, not yet.

8. Ban one Christmas song.

Slade’s: “Well here it is Merry Christmas”. (In fact I thought it was already punishable by an ASBO to play it).

9. Share with us a favourite tradition.

Nothing original: sherry and mince pies for Santa.

10. Bring back a tradition from your childhood. :christmas_tree:

Apples and tangerines in the stocking.

11. What would your ideal Christmas be like?

A bit like it is now, but a bit lower key.

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1. Go on, I know you want to, share with us your favourite Carol and your favourite non religious Christmas song.

I have two favourite carols:
One in Royal David City
but in Welsh - Dawel ddinas Bethlehem

Non-religious I also have two:
Fairytale of New York - even if it is very over played I love this song
2000 miles by the Pretenders for the line: “He’s gone 2000 miles // It’s very far” - it is that!

2. What’s the best festive experience you’ve ever had?

Waking up at 3am when I was 7, seeing something that in the dark looked like our cat, stroked it and found out it was covered in wrapping paper!! It was my presents at the foot of the bed!! That was it…I was up…that was a long christmas for my parents.

3. Name a gift that you’re excited about giving

3 toy cars to my 5 year old nephew from Munich because it’ll mean he, my brother and my sister-in-law are here for Christmas!

4. Talking of gifts, what random item would you like to see under your tree this year (whether it fits or not)

:pregnant_woman: — not literally under the tree! Emma isn’t pregnant but I am very broody.

5. Go on, show us your decs.

They’re still not up! :open_mouth:

6. What’s on your Christmas dinner plate?

I don’t mind which meat so long as there are plenty of roast potatoes! I also love sprouts.

7. Is it driving you nuts yet?

nah.

8. Ban one Christmas song.

Mariah Carey - All I want for Christmas. :hear_no_evil:

9. Share with us a favourite tradition.

My Dad always cooked a massive fry up on Christmas Day and wore some kind of silly hat, waistcoat and bow tie combo.

10. Bring back a tradition from your childhood. :christmas_tree:

The above.

11. What would your ideal Christmas be like?

In a massive house with the entire family, with someone who could magically cook and clean up the food.

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I sing the first verse of Once In Royal as a solo at our church’s midnight service on Christmas Eve… Any chance of the Welsh words?!

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it’s called - Draw yn ninas dafydd frenin:

Draw yn ninas Dafydd Frenin,
yn y beudy isel, gwael,
dodai mam un bach mewn preseb,
nid oedd llety gwell i’w gael;
Mair fendigaid oedd y fam,
Iesu’r plentyn bach di-nam.

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Thank you!!

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I’m horrified! If you ever need to claim asylum from this tyrannical regime, I can smuggle a message for you…

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1. Go on, I know you want to, share with us your favourite Carol and your favourite non religious Christmas song.
Carol: I’d have to go for We Three Kings, sung at a gallop, or God Rest
Ye Merry Gentlemen (they both have good ‘oh-oh’ bit.
Non religious: I’m torn. Greg Lake’s I Believe in Father Christmas grabbed me when I was seven and I still love it. But then, there’s Fairytale of New York, which let’s face it, is the superior song…
2. What’s the best festive experience you’ve ever had?
Every Christmas is fantastic. Hard to pick, but the first Christmas we moved to the UK from Sierra Leone, we had snow on Christmas Day, and that was pretty special, though we didn’t know it at the time. We thought it was always like that!
…Though, hang on, I think even that’s overshadowed by Grandpa falling through the ceiling on Christmas Eve when he was ‘secretly’ getting the Christmas stocking fillers out of the attic.
3. Name a gift that you’re excited about giving
Gone low-key on the gifts this year, but I can’t wait to see my grandson Aneurin unwrap his light saber (Shhh! Don’t tell him!)
4. Talking of gifts, what random item would you like to see under your tree this year (whether it fits or not)
I hope our new grandson will come in time to lie under it. Even if just so his mum can sit a bit closer to the table!
5. Go on, show us your decs.
They’re not impressive enough this year. I usually do every room, but I’ve done one wall this year as we’re not going to be here.
6. What’s on your Christmas dinner plate?
Jolof rice. A big mountain of it! :drooling_face:
7. Is it driving you nuts yet?
Never.
8. Ban one Christmas song.
Mistletoe and Wine. Please!
9. Share with us a favourite tradition.
Hugely competitive and incredibly noisy family games.
10. Bring back a tradition from your childhood. :christmas_tree:
Waiting up as late as we could to catch the adults brining the stockings in (Father Christmas never came to our house :open_mouth:)
11. What would your ideal Christmas be like?
I’m looking forward to next year, when I don’t have to get up at 6 every morning to fill up the Rayburn and empty the ash. (I’ll just get up at 6 every morning to be excited and run around a magically warm house!)

NADOLIG LLAWEN, BAWB!!

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:hushed_face::hushed_face::hushed_face:

Oh how lovely!

Shhhhhhhhh… don’t tell Angharad… our nine year old thinks she is Mariah Carey… :squinting_face_with_tongue:

Oh I love jolof rice… :drooling_face:

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  1. Go on, I know you want to, share with us your favourite Carol and your favourite non religious Christmas song.

Too many favourites, but to pick one carol - The Sussex Carol

and one song, Mike Doughty, I hear the bells

  1. What’s the best festive experience you’ve ever had?
    I remember the year it snowed in Cardiff and my brother and my dad and I went up on Garth mountain in the morning and had a snowball fight.

  2. Name a gift that you’re excited about giving
    We’re very low key with gifts this year, but I have some books that I hope the kids will like, and I am planning theatre trips one on one with each of them, which is a sneaky present for me too!

  3. Talking of gifts, what random item would you like to see under your tree this year (whether it fits or not)

I’d like to come back from Caerdydd to find someone had given us a new bathroom.

  1. Go on, show us your decs.
    Here’s our tree complete with draig goch!

IMG_6683
IMG_6683480×640 98.1 KB

  1. What’s on your Christmas dinner plate?

The traditional turkey dinner followed by my perfected lighter version of christmas pudding.

  1. Is it driving you nuts yet?

No, even though I was working on Christmas from early September, including decorating a tree for a photoshoot in October! But if one thing gets too much for me it’s the amount of sugary stuff people bring in for our office. It’s nice that people want to treat us, but it starts in early Dec and for the last 2 weeks there has never been less than a choice of 5 items - I can only resist for so long before I overload …

  1. Ban one Christmas song.

I wish it could be Christmas every day

  1. Share with us a favourite tradition.

Decorating the tree as a family (complete with the same arguments each year about the best way to do it) followed by switching on the lights to the music from The Box of Delights.

And watching the whole thing every year even though we know it off by heart.

  1. Bring back a tradition from your childhood. :christmas_tree:

I’ve kept all the best ones…

  1. What would your ideal Christmas be like?

I like the Christmases we have, but if it would be nice to magically have my dad join us and see how the children have grown up.

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I love this SO MUCH!

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I want this job!! :grin:

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Quite a few of these questions can be answered by ‘A pomegranate’. When we were children, we got one a year, in our Christmas stockings, along with a satsuma and pointless walnuts. As an adult, I met a pomegranate farmer in Iraq and told him that for me a pomegranate was an expensive annual treat. He was so moved to hear of the crushing poverty in the UK that he said I could come back at harvest time and fill my car with pomegranates. A lovely offer, but it was their rarity which made them so magical, like the Christmas pudding with its silver sixpence…

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  1. Go on, I know you want to, share with us your favourite Carol and your favourite non religious Christmas song.
    Religious Song Do you Hear What I Hear. Captures the solemnity of the story.
    Non-religious It’s a tie between two songs, both from A Charlie Brown Christmas. I’ve watched this show every Christmas since I was five. These two songs, whenever I hear them, I think of Christmas, Family, Snow and tons of great memories.

  1. What’s the best festive experience you’ve ever had? Somewhat similar to MikelWood, our Daughter was born on December 31st. She was planned due to complications, so Christmas was full of expectations!

  2. Name a gift that you’re excited about giving - This year our Daughter gets to do a treasure hunt. We love doing treasure hunts, so this will be a lot of fun.

  3. Talking of gifts, what random item would you like to see under your tree this year (whether it fits or not) - It’s an inside joke with my Wife and I, but “water pants”

  4. Go on, show us your decs. I’ll update after the picture is taken

  5. What’s on your Christmas dinner plate? Hold on while I ask my Wife. She’s my social planner. :grinning:

  6. Is it driving you nuts yet? Only the stupid repetition of the same Xmas songs in every store, every year. I now dislike them all. I truly pity the employees who must listen to that crap daily.

  7. Ban one Christmas song. Feliz Navidad - Something about the lyrics and the melody sets my teeth on edge. Like scraping fingernails on a chalkboard. Be gone song of the devil :japanese_ogre:

  8. Share with us a favourite tradition. Decorating the tree with Wife and Daughter playing our traditional Christmas.

  9. Bring back a tradition from your childhood. :christmas_tree: Snow ball fights! Where I grew up, these were a standard in December. However, In Delaware, snow is rare until late January or February.

  10. What would your ideal Christmas be like? Family and dogs on a sunny beach on St. Johns in the Caribbean.

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My Wife and I agree. We would love this too!

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Have you come across https://www.treasuretrails.co.uk/? They’re really brilliant :blush:

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Diolch, Kate-Davies. That’s a great idea! Wish they did that in the parks in the United States…in fact, I’ll probably suggest it.

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Seeing as it’s holiday-time, I’m going to give this a go with a bit of help, so I’m not accepting blame for any dodgy answers :slight_smile:

  • Go on, I know you want to, share with us your favourite Carol and your favourite non religious Christmas song.
    Oh holy night (night divine)
    Last Christmas

  • What’s the best festive experience you’ve ever had?
    Not specifically Christmas day - but I’d go for sledging

  • Name a gift that you’re excited about giving
    Christmas Jewellery.
    In the past - a pot bellied pig

  • **Talking of gifts, what random item would you like to see under your tree this year (whether it fits or not)**Classic Motorbike :slight_smile:

  • Go on, show us your decs.

    WIN_20181223_20_16_46_Pro
    WIN_20181223_20_16_46_Pro1280×720 171 KB

  • What’s on your Christmas dinner plate?
    Chicken & Nut Roast

  • Is it driving you nuts yet?
    Not yet

  • Ban one Christmas song.
    The only one I could of was Cowboy Carol, but after listening to it again, I remember singing it in a school play - so can’t bin it now, sorry.
    There'l be a new day beginning from tonight - Search Videos

  • Share with us a favourite tradition.
    Friends coming around.

Tradition to bring back
:christmas_tree:
Mince pie & Drink left out Santa; Carrot for Rudolph

  • What would your ideal Christmas be like?
    Someone else doing the cooking (Glenda, my wife, speaking)
    [/quote]
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