someone, i dunno, maybe britishers, explain proper crimbo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqBF7TiyATo

oh yeah this is watchable

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo'_Selecta!

A few years back at the Green Man festival, I spotted a bunch of carousers who spent the whole weekend wearing bo selecta chins, but not being wild or anything, just sitting on folding chairs and watching bands with their children, like it wasn't an issue. I will never be able to figure out the thought-process that leads to such behaviour.

Sir, – I wonder how many people are offended – as I am – by the smart alecs who refer to Christmas as “Chrimbo”. By trying to demean the core of Christian belief they merely demean themselves. –Yours, etc,

MARGARET BUTLER,

St Helen’s Road,

Booterstown,

Co Dublin.

maggies a catholic bimbo

excited at mentions of chrimbo

thats the worst of her fears?

sure it's only two years

since those babies were let out of limbo

"Chrimbo" sounds like quite an Irish construction now you bring it up, can imagine a character in Joyce or O'Brien using it

"Crimble" was something that was referred to on a Beatles Christmas disc.

I thought it was from Liverpool but apparently it isn't

The pervy squirrel who used to get boners was somewhat amusing.

My friend Clair says things like Chrimbo and pressies all the time. She's from Essex.

The pervy squirrel who used to get boners was somewhat amusing.

― Airwrecka Bliptrap Blapmantis (ENBB)

I believe it was a bear.

I remember finding the first episode of Bo' Selecta I watched kind of weirdly hilarious. Don't know what I was on, looking back it was excruciating.

they're pretty much UK-wide words now i think - albeit pretty twee - but the point of origin is possibly older and more specific than people think

Theres the dub thing of 'shorten to first syllable, add o' but this doesnt sound like one of em tbh, beano english this imo

xp thought u meant squirrel_police tbrr

It was totally a bear. A bear named . . . Steven? Maybe?

The OED cites the first printed usage to 1928. They credit John Lennon's 1963 usage in a Beatles' Fan Club Christmas single as the first recorded use of the variant form Crimble.

thx darragh fair points

Don't know what I was on, looking back it was excruciating.

Actually seeing as it was 2002 I was almost certainly on a shit ton of skunk.

It had it's amusing moments, like the sketch where 'Craig David' tells 'Martin Bashir' that he's a two faced backstabbing bastard. Or Avid Merion keeping 'The Craig' (who was on the identity line up Never Mind The Buzzcocks two nights ago) locked in a cupboard. Preferable to that irritating one note Keith Lemon character.

There was an impromptu duet between Avid Merion and Meat Loaf in one episode that was lovely.

The OED's entry for 1928 looks a bit suspicious to me - like it's a 'criminy' 'cripes' 'crikey' thing, not about Christmas:

  1928 Strand Mag. July 70/1 306 You've saved your man, by crimbo.    1966 P. Moloney Plea for Mersey 63 Dick Crimbo = St. Nicholas.    1989 Looks Dec. 5 Worth cancelling a crimbo party to catch this one, it's totally fab.    2001 GQ Nov. 122/2 A crisp £20 handed to the dustman just before Crimbo may seem like sheer profligacy.

But I cba to dig through google books to check. Does seem to have a strong liverpool connection.

yeah that 1928 one is off

Can't find anything for either on Google books before 1989, when there's a sudden spate of Crimbo-ing. I know it's older than that (the 1966 OED citation looks good) but I'm wondering what happened to make fetch Crimbo happen in 1989.

(Bit hard to search for because of Crimbo Point and people with the surname Crimble, though.)

what happened = the tweepocalypse

I feel like Crimbo has been in use for my whole lifetime. I was born in 78.

it's got an 80s Smash Hits vibe to me - a hunt through December issues might identify modern Crimbo patient zero.

http://mattgoss.la/tag/bear-crimbo/

this thread is delivering

I always thought it was an NME interview between Paul Morley and Julian Cope (ca. 1980?) that introduced the rest of the country to Crimbo (and Corrie)? Followed thereafter by an explosion in Scousers on TV: Brookie, Boys From the Blackstuff, errrrrr, and that kids TV show I've totally forgotten the title of...

Scully?

That's it! I was about to say Stookie.

"Crimbo" identified as naval slang in the 1989 Pusser's Rum Guide to Royal Navy Slanguage

used in Punch c. 1991

Punch liked this word

Tony Thorne's Dictionary of Contemporary Slang gives us crim, crimbo, crimble as "adults’ nursery words (probably originally from Liverpool) which were popularised, particularly by radio disc jockeys, in the 1970s." And then gives a Just 17 citation for Crimble from 1987.

Just 17, then Looks magazine in the OED… if not Smash Hits specifically, then the EMAP/Hepworth axis more generally seem to be the ones stripping the dignity from Christmas, just as the centurions stripped Our Lord of his garments one Christmas long ago.