Weirdest Dec. 25 of my life. Which is fine, because it means it was memorable.

It never felt like Christmas here. Not really. Aside from the couple of hours I spent at St. Andrew’s last night. Remember, for the overwhelming majority of people here, Christmas has no meaning. Which means that in a lot of ways this wasn’t Christmas, for me, as much as Friday.

And I forgot to mention that it was about 75 degrees both today and yesterday. With lots of sun and humidity. So not exactly sleigh-bell kind of weather, either.

It was back to work today, which was fine. Because to me, Christmas is over by about noon on Dec. 25.

Not so, however, for our British cousins.

The British have rather a different approach to Christmas than Yanks do, and we’ve gotten some insights into this this year (in one former British colony) and last year in Hong Kong (another former British colony).

For instance … the guy in the red suit isn’t Santa Claus. He is Father Christmas.

When you talk about a “Christmas cracker,” you’re not talking about food — which is what I thought as recently as a week ago. A cracker is not a saltine. It is a small cardboard tube into which tiny gifts or candy have been stuffed, the whole thing is wrapped and the wrapping twisted at each end. And what you do with it is … you get someone to hold each end, and pull, and whoever gets the tube attached to their twisted end (think of pulling a wishbone) “wins” — and gets what’s inside the tube. Leah and I did this today, and I won, and got a tiny jigsaw puzzle and a joke.

The Brits eat turkey for Christmas. Yanks, maybe do, but often it’s ham, right? Anyway, the semi-trouble we had finding turkey for Thanksgiving, last month … would not have been an issue two weeks later, when turkeys began appearing — for all the Brits getting ready for Christmas.

Christmas Eve has become huge in the States … but Christmas Day is much bigger in Britain.

Dec. 26 is known in the States as a big shopping day. In Britain, it is Boxing Day, originally a day when you gave gifts to the poor … and something Britons now approach almost like Yanks do Thanksgiving — as a day for sitting around, doing not much of anything and watching a lot of sports. For Yanks, it’s football. For Brits, it’s football. Soccer, that is. One local sports bar here in the UAE is promising to televise something like 14 consecutive hours of soccer on Boxing Day, tomorrow.

Americans have pie. Brits have “Christmas pudding” — which is a bit like fruit cake. Dense and heavy. But dark. I had some today, part of the Christmas lunch that the company brought in for the Friday newsroom crew. It was sweet, with lots of raisins.

The U.S. has One Day of Christmas. The Brits have 12 Days. (And the “turtle dove” song to prove it).

I haven’t gotten around, yet, to weighing in on the “two nations divided by a common tongue” thing. Turns out the U.S. and Britain are further divided by significantly different Christmas traditions.

You wouldn’t think so. And you would be wrong.