Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: Rituals, 250th anniversary of Jane Austen, Women and the dark

Episode Date: December 27, 2025

On Woman’s Hour Christmas Day programme, Nuala McGovern and Anita Rani discussed the rituals and traditions that we do at Christmas. Some passed down across the generations and some adapted through in-laws or friends. With a recent YouGov poll saying that 89% of Brits celebrate Christmas and most of the preparation and work that goes into this festive season is done by women, what role do women play in the making and maintaining of these rituals? Nuala and Anita find out about the importance of nostalgia and why we love to do the same thing year after year. Dr Audrey Tang, author and a chartered psychologist with the British Psychological Society, explains the importance of the rituals we do and why we do them.Woman’s Hour celebrates the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. Her novels have been translated into almost every major language and there are societies of Austen lovers and scholars in every corner of the globe, from Australia to Argentina and Iran to Italy. To tell us why Austen still captivates readers in their parts of the world, Nuala McGovern was joined by Laaleen Sukhera, founder of the Jane Austen Society of Pakistan and the founding member of the Austen Society of Japan, and researcher at the University of Southampton, Dr. Hatsuyo Shimazaki.We've just had the shortest day of the year, and the most amount of darkness. But how do women live their lives in the dark today? You might have to work at night, or find it the best time to be productive. Or you might harness darkness as a time to think and meditate. Anita Rani speaks to two people who have considered the pros and cons of darkness in very different ways. Lucy Edwards is a Blind Broadcaster, Journalist, Author, Content Creator and Disability Activist. Arifa Akbar is theatre critic for the Guardian whose investigations into the dark formed her book, Wolf Moon.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Annette Wells

Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello and welcome to the program. Today, we're bringing you highlights from our recent festive programs. We'll explore the meaning behind our rituals and traditions. With this month marking the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth, we'll be finding out why her writing attracts such a devoted following around the world and we'll step into the world of women and the dark with broadcaster and disability advocate Lucy Edwards.

theatre critic Arefah Akbar as they share what the dark means to them? Are you comfortable? So let's get started. First, we're talking about the rituals and traditions that make the Christmas period so special. Some are passed down through generations, others adapted through in-laws or friends. Well, to explore this, Nula and I spoke to Dr. Audrey Tang, author and chartered psychologist with the British Psychological Society. And we asked her why rituals around Christmas are so important for us. and what role they play in our lives.

They give us a sense of belonging. It's actually Michael Crichton. There's a lovely quote from him who wrote Jurassic Park. He says, if you don't know your past, you're like a leaf that doesn't know it's part of a tree. And there's something about that sense of belonging and a ritual gives us a history. It gives us a heritage.

It gives us something to cling on to. And that's very positive for knowing who we are and our own identity. But there is a difference between traditions and rituals. So traditions are customs, usually with, a bit of emotional weight passed down over the years and generations. Rituals are what anthropologists would call a set of restricted codes, their behaviours that need to be done in a certain way. So you can have the tradition of having a Christmas pudding at Christmas, but the ritual around it

might be, it has to be lit with a certain brandy at a certain time, with a certain spoon. That's the ritual that belongs to it. They can be mutually exclusive. A tradition doesn't have to have a ritual involved. A ritual doesn't have to have a tradition, but they sit so beautifully together. And as I say, they give us that sense of belonging. When we know where we come from, we know how to progress in the future. How important is nostalgia to all of this? Nostalgia. There's so much research, which shows us that nostalgia has, it boosts our self-esteem, it boosts our sense of well-being. And in doing that alone, it can protect us against the negative effects of cortisol and stress and so on.

Nostalgia gives us a bit of a hit of oxytocin. It's not living in the past. It is looking at the past fondly. The problem can come if we spend too long in that space and don't actually move forward. But in remembering things, it brings us closer to the people that we're involved. It's meaningful because it's a part of who we are and what shaped us. And therefore, it helps us buffer stress. It helps us generate more positive memories.

It helps us to promote more gratitude. and gratitude also can change those pathways in our brain and make us focus on the positive. So it actually changes the brain? There's something called neuroplasticity, which means that although our brain is fixed in a certain way, we have certain habits and the brain loves to be efficient. If we do things in a certain way,

we will continue doing them because the brain is thinking great. Well, I'm comfortable with this. However, if we choose to practice gratitude or we choose to practice kindness or whatever those thoughts are, or even if we choose to practice going to the gym in them, morning, our brain will make new pathways and it will become a lot easier to continue with those pathways, but it does take work to do. I'm going to read out a message from one of our listeners here. It says, as our Christmas ritual, we put raffle tickets on all the presents under the

tree. We then select a ticket and get to give that present to the recipient. It's really a distribution method and means that everyone has time to see the gifts being opened and appreciate the giving as well as the receiving. I'm imagining lots of people at home looking at their children who've just devoured the Christmas presents with no thought for anything. It's like absolute carnage. Are there particular rituals that people tell you they love doing over Christmas

Audrey? Well, my mother-in-law does one very similar to that. She makes a big Christmas cracker and everyone at the gathering pulls it and then there's gifts for men, gifts for women and everyone distributes that. So it's a little gift that everyone goes home with. Other people, this is a fun one.

Slapping the jelly. What's that? Explain. Literally what it's, says on the tin. They have a jelly at Christmas dinner and everyone has to slap it with a wooden spoon. And this is just a family thing that's been passed down because someone did it at Christmas and it was cute. Everybody said, oh, that's so funny. That's so cute. The next year, do you remember when she'd smack the jelly? We all smack the jelly and it's not Christmas without someone smacking the jelly. Can rituals ever be a bad thing? If they're too rigidly adhered to, yes, they can.

If you become obsessive over it. So if, say, let's go back to the Christmas putting an example of lighting it with a certain spoon with certain brandy. If you've lost the spoon or you can't get that brandy and then this ruins Christmas and I say that in inverted commas, that is affecting your day-to-day life. As a psychologist, what we look for is if anything is affecting you day-to-day in a negative manner, this is a problem and this may need a little bit of outside intervention and support.

So if it becomes obsessive, yes, rituals can become problematic. I can read a few stats here. Yes, please. The National Folklore Survey for England have asked people this year what their top 10 Christmas traditions are. The top ones are number one, giving or receiving gifts, that's 66%. Number two, having a Christmas meal, followed by decorating a Christmas tree, and that women were more likely to engage in more Christmas traditions than men.

Why do we think that is, Audrey? Well, let's start with gift giving. Gift giving is a love language. So Dr. Gary Chapman defined five love languages. They were gifts, spending time together, words of affirmation, acts of service and intimacy. And gift giving could be someone's way of expressing and wanting to receive love. And if that's your method, you're going to love giving gifts no matter what. The problem is if your family maybe likes words of affirmation or quality time,

they'd rather see you than receive the gift and it might end up being a bit of cross-purposes. If you've given them a wonderful gift, they've given you nothing, but they've given you time. And so that can be a problem. The thing about women getting more involved is often because women do, the emotional labour in the home, women do the preparation. And it's not necessarily because women have more time, because women are often doing two jobs. Ali Russell Hoshill calls it doing a second shift. But in a way, because of that, the women know what the rituals are. The women know what the traditions are. And certainly in Southeast Asian families where I'm Puranican, so this is

Chinese Malay from many centuries ago. The woman ruled the house. She was the matriarch. She She did all the housekeeping, did all the cook, all of that. And if you threatened any one of those rituals, that was a real threat to their power. Well, I'm also thinking, even on a day-to-day basis now, if a woman puts in so much effort to get the gifts or have the meal or whatever it might be, you want to get a little something back. Yeah. Also, can we just say a message to that woman, please make sure you're at least enjoying yourself. Yes. I worry that we take all this pressure on and everything has to be just right because we need the presence. But actually, how about sometimes it's okay to let a ritual go?

Am I on to something here, Audrey? 100%. Because of social media, we are so pressed to have a performative Christmas, the thing that we can post on the socials for everybody else, not for ourselves. And we need to take a moment and say, well, what is going to make me happy? What's going to bring me joy? Because that's what Christmas is all about. I can come with some more stats from that same survey.

We're loving this. Stap Nula. Around a fifth of point. people said that they had adopted a new Christmas tradition because of something they had seen in a film, on television or online, with the new traditions most likely in the 25 to 34 age group. I feel that kind of intersects of what you're saying, Audrey. It does. And actually new traditions, because you've learned something cool on social media, there's nothing wrong with that. Because when it comes to social media, we can learn brilliant things on there. The

problem is when we are doing it just for social media, it's always about the intention. If your intention is for likes for other people or some sort of validation for other people, that's not healthy. If it is simply because you saw it, that looks fun. You're creating new memories with the people around you in real life. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Chartered psychologist Dr. Audrey Tang joined us for that discussion. And if you missed our Christmas Day program presented by Nula and myself, yes, both women's are our presenters in the studio at the same time. Anything can happen, and it did. You can listen again on BBC Sounds. You'll also hear from cookery writer Sky MacAlpine on festive food traditions and our conversation about hosting

friends rather than family at Christmas. Now, Jane Austen's novels have been translated into almost every major language and there are societies of Austin lovers and scholars in every corner of the globe, from Australia to Argentina to Iran to Italy. Joining Neula to discuss why Austin still captivates readers in their parts of the world. Our Dr. Hatsuyo Shimazaki, founding member of the Austin Society of Japan, who is now at the University of Southampton, and Laleen Sukerra, founder of the Jane Austen Society of Pakistan. How did she get introduced to Jane Austen in the first place?

I grew up with a lot of books, but it was actually my aunt Helen and Hartfordshire who gave me, on my 12th birthday, an entire collection, and I was besotted immediately. My understanding is the society that you founded started out with high tea cosplay. I mean, this is continents away and centuries away from Regency England. What was that appeal to a group of young professional women in Pakistan? Well, first of all, it was a very eclectic group. We had teachers, journalists, people from different nationalities. And I would say like international Pakistanis, like I'm a Pakistani origin.

Spat and I currently live in Dubai. It was fun. It was playful. It was relatable. And I just love meeting people in a similar wavelength who can sort of enjoy a little whimsical tea and chatter. And what was relatable about it? What was not relatable about it, honestly? Not much has changed in two and a half centuries. Whether you're a young lady or you're a mother, I would say a lot of the characterizations, the gender roles, the etiquette, the marriage market still exists, and a lot of other things as well, whether it's the way you sort of deal with suitors, making a good match, two people don't get married, their families actually marry each other, and some of it is actually quite stifling and frustrating as well, so it's not everything that's fun, fun in games.

I can't speak for everybody because it's a massive country, but as a Pakistani origin person and other expats, I would say for my social class at least, there's still a lot of similarities. And we live a sort of double life where we juxtapose these ancestral traditions and generational etiquette with contemporary lives. It's so interesting.

Let me turn to you, Hatsuyo. How were you introduced to Jane Austen? I think I've read Pride and Prejudice in a course at the university. So that was my first time. So that was in university. And is Austin very popular across Japan? She is. Yes, I think she has been really popular since, I would say, 1960s.

But the first translation came in 1926. So it's already a century. And is it particular books that have kind of caught the imagination? You mentioned Pride and Prejudice. Yes, I think so. I mean, initially when Austin was translated and introduced to the Japanese readers, it was about the time, I mean,

Edwardian time when, like, Japanese women resonate with Elizabeth Bennett being independent. You know, I am a gentry woman, and then Kathleen Daberg, she's also a gentry woman, so we are equal. So that way of, you know, speaking to the also was unimaginable in that time. Unimaginable.

So it's like that hierarchy that's within society of the class of where you are and who you're able to speak to and what way you're able to speak which you as an Austin scholar I know you've studied narrative voice in the novels

and reading about you I hadn't thought about it previously but Austin's style has a narrative technique called free indirect discourse. Yes. So that's when we hear the third person narrator with the character's first person, so the thoughts and the voice and perspective.

And I suppose at times the conflict between the two. Yes. What is Austin is really genius is she is using this for both speech and thought. So this thought part is very well known. It's almost like you are watching a film and then the character's inner voice, which is silent voice, but we can hear it. So there is a conflicting, as you say, what she's actually saying, but what she's thinking inward, it can be, you know,

criticizing a male protagonist or, you know, patriarch system itself. And so how does that, if it does, relate to Japanese society, perhaps even today? Yes, so you will be surprised because language does exist on its own. Always, you know, there's a historical context. and we use, as a Japanese women, I need to use respect form, humble form and polite form and female vocabulary, rather than male vocabulary, by choosing which is the best to suit in this social context,

we situate ourselves in a hierarchy. And that is what Austin is doing with this free-index speech for speech presentation. For example, when, finally, Price, as an adopted daughter, speaking with the baronet, she can't speak out what she says. And Austin is used almost muting what funny is saying, making it quite subtle using this friendly discourse, while we can clearly see what Answer Thomas is saying. So this is a power balance relationship between them. And I suppose that gives us that deeper level of really

understanding those characters and I guess human nature can be human nature no matter what century it's in and perhaps why making it so relatable. Coming back to you, Laleen, what was it that that drew you in? Was it a particular book or character? Well, I started off very young, reading Austin very young. So Catherine Morland immediately resonated and I found Anne Elliott, for example, very old and boring and who I, of course, appreciate so much more now as a divorced person myself. And I think Emma Woodhouse has also been very relatable to me over the years. I lived with my widow dad. You know, I matchmake a little bit. We just need to stop there for a second. You also work as a matchmaker. For those that haven't read Emma, they might have watched

clueless. You get an idea of Emma who's kind of interfering in other people's businesses and wanting to make a match while being kind of clueless about herself or not self-aware. So with Jane Austen's novels. I mean, do you take inspiration from that with your job as a matchmaker? Well, much like Austin herself, I like happy endings, even though I'm single. I just enjoy connecting people, but it's not my full-time job. I just do it on the side as a passion project. But I do want to add one little thing. I've never seen Jane Austen as an other. I've always found her relatable, her world, the Regency world is very relatable. And it's also due to perhaps the fact that there's a historical link. I believe it was her brother Henry who published her novels and then

his wife Eliza, Warren Hastings' love child and a lot of that money, which actually came from the subcontinent, was used to publish her novels. So I think that's a very fun link. And a lot of the fashions in the Regency period as well came from this part of the world. So I love that. I love that it's interwoven so closely. Into the society. I want to come back to you, Hatsu, because we're talking about society. And we know about the declining marriage and birth rates in Japan. When Jane Austen was growing up, it was less than half the women were married. What about Japanese readers today and Austin? And I suppose in a way, reflecting some of that. Well, I am unfortunately contributing this decline of marriage, probably. However, I don't think the marriage may be declined, but

Japan itself hasn't given up on it. The government even offers instance. incentives to sustain the pension system. We need more, you know, labour in the future. And the parents still care about their children, you know, if they can marry. Although, of course, arranged marriage is gone quite a long time in Japan. But I think the reason is because Japanese women now have financial securities do not have to rely on, you know, male protection in finance. That was Dr. Hatsuyo Shimazaki and Laleen Sokera.

And if you'd like to listen to the Jane Austen program in full, then search for Tuesday the 17th of December on BBC Sounds. Now, on our Boxing Day program, we explored women's relationship with the dark. How do we live our lives in the dark today? For some, it might be a necessity working through the night. For others, it's a time for creativity, reflection or meditation. Well, to consider the pros and cons of darkness in very different ways

I spoke to Lucy Edwards, who's a blind broadcaster, journalist, author, content creator and disability activist, and also Arefa Akbar, theatre critic for The Guardian, whose investigations into the dark informed her book, Wolf Moon. I'm quite scared of the dark, but in a theatre space, it's communal darkness. And communal darkness, for me, is utterly safe, and it's a great leveller. So the lights are off, you're in this auditorium together, and there's a sort of comfort and excitement. and excitement, I think, in it. And when I make my notes, if I were to put a little pen light on

or a phone light on, I think people would get really angry because the darkness is part of the deal here. Yeah. You tend to remember what you've seen, but I'll put key words down and feelings and thoughts. And when I get outside,

I'll have wonky words all over the page or I'll fill a page with four sentences. But it's really useful because it's in the moment how you're feeling and what you're thinking. Why did you want to explore darkness in your book? It started off out of fear.

You know, I was thinking, why am I afraid of the dark? I'm 50-something women, I'm really independent, sort of fearless in many ways. So what is it about the dark? The inside dark scares me than most. Unknown inside rooms that I don't know, hotel rooms, spaces inside. Ironically, I'm fine outside

because I grew up in a family with a father who loved walking. So I sort of inherited that love of nightwalking, but still there's this fear. That led me into a bit of an expedition, into darkness, into night time. When I realised that night time and dark spaces, this sounds obvious, but it took a little while to realise darkness and night time is different for women. Lucy, I want to bring you in as well. What would you say your experience of it is?

It's so fascinating. I live my whole entire life in the dark, I can't see. And for 12 years, it's pretty much been this way. Minus a tiny bit of light perception that I actually lost about seven years ago now. So my authentic kind of vision of darkness has always been, I guess, when I was losing my sight, when I was really young, like from 11 to 17 years old, that was the place where I couldn't see the most. You know, I got night blindness first because of my retinal detachment. So the dark outside was always really scary. So the opposite, like inside for me, even now, I am so happy in my own space because I've learned it.

I've got kind of muscle memory and the ability to like touch and feel like anything in my own home. It's like my sanctuary. Could you explain to us what it was like when you first lost your sight? Absolutely. So I would say there was the most scariest moment. Now I'm well adjusted and I love being blacked. but it hasn't always been that way. I think when you lose your sight at 17,

you're kind of just terrified. I remember walking outside the front door with my late guide dog, Olga, my first guide dog and putting one foot in front of the other was terrifying, even thinking to you know, trust this lovely gorgeous doggy with your life and hold that harness

for the first time was utterly just earth-shattering really. So how did you overcome that? strategies to cope with that it was a long process it was quite terrifying it felt like groundhog day when I first would wake up um from the morning to the night and then going to sleep I'd be like there is nothing different about my life but why do I have to wake up blind and the why me kind of set in but the more I did things independently in my beautiful darkness that's how I like to call it I you know I I can make cups of tea and I you know people often

look maybe at my life and think, oh my gosh, you don't do that. You don't want to touch hot water or you're going to hurt yourself. But because I've got strategies now, like liquid level indicators, other adaptive tools, like my tools in technology is AI these days. I don't feel alone in my darkness and my reality is very fulfilling. And I find other ways to kind of bring light into my life, but just not in the typical sense. I've just written down the phrase, my beautiful darkness. Yeah, I love that.

Yeah. Arefa, in your book, you explain how you're an insomniac. I bet there's quite a few people listening who can relate to that. You kind of fall into two categories, don't you? I'm the person who always says, oh, yeah, I sleep really well. And there's eye rolls around the room from the people who can't. Envy and resentment. Yeah, yeah. I've been told that many times. You're also scared of the dark, but you really enjoy night walking.

So how does all that fit together? And I just already, I can hear and feel all the paradox. and contradictions around darkness, the beautiful darkness that Lucy said, talked about so beautifully, and the terrifying darkness that we as women, but, you know, as people feel often and are conditioned, I think, to feel and head out.

So I think they sit side by side, the terror and the sort of thrill of it. And we talk about the thrilling darkness. There's a sort of fairground ride fear. You know, for me, the inside, I imagine all sorts of things. I sort of project it into the darkness. Maybe that's a result of being told lots of bedtime stories

that are really quite scary that my parents told me. It was a South Asian tradition to tell you terrifying stories of terrifying creatures that children love. Children love macab tales. And so I grew up on a diet of that. And that's this flip thing of fairground-ride fear. You know, you love it. You're scared and you're thrilled.

And so that's the sort of, space that I was looking at. Obviously, the practical sides of the fear, you know, the fear is real. Everyone from Peter Sackcliffe to Wayne Cousins has shown us the fear is real. So there was that side to look at the practicalities of night walking and being a woman in the dark. But then there's also pleasure and liberation that you get when you go out, even when you deny yourself sleep. There's that heady sort of I'm going to go out, I'm going to disobey my body clock

and I'm just going to go out and have fun and I'm going to do things to access, I'm going to express myself, there's a wildness to the night hours, I think, that allow you to be wild and a sort of boundary crossing to be purposefully

awake for the sake of hedonism, for the sake of congregating and pleasure. I want to bring Lucy in here. I mean, how after Aretha saying that she's an insomniac, how seeing darkness yourself do you struggle and your own sleep patterns, how you kind of struggle or not struggle with those? I would have a lot more of a body clock when I had a bit more light perception, but I have this condition named non-24, meaning I kind of wake up at like 3, 4 a.m. being like,

is it lunchtime? Have I just slept a little bit? And it's only when my phone is kind of talking to me and saying, no, in fact, it is 3.m. I'm then trying to tell my body, no. know, you know, we do have a Sarcadian rhythm, like, please don't wake me up, but necessarily. And I have this battle all the time with like nighttime tea and being like, let's, let's have Zen spa music and let's wind down. And all of those things do really help me. But I do find that I have a bit more broken sleep. But also, just picking it from what you guys were saying, as women and as a disabled woman myself, you know, I can't see whether it's dark or light inside or outside my home yet I'm still worried about walking in the dark and I think because of what we've

been taught like as women and then that kind of leads me on to thinking oh well you can hear a pin drop at night and my hearing although it's possibly the same as everybody else is I do hone into different sounds more and I think I work myself up more with the crunching of the leaves which are somewhat objectively beautiful of course but I'm thinking about those footsteps behind me I'm overthinking those things. And I'm like, am I just doing that because I've been conditioned to? Not because, you know, it's the same experience whether I'm out in the day or night. That's really an interesting thought. I went to the Isle of Sark, which only allows for natural darkness. I went out at 9 o'clock at night. And I was petrified. And I talked to the guesthouse manager the next day.

And she said, when she first arrived, she had to unlearn a whole lifetime lessons of taking care because women are held to account. They still are held to account if they go out and something awful happens at night. I just want to bring Lucy in again. What's the best bit about the dark for you? Oh, it's gorgeous. I think, number one, I am able to not judge people on their physical appearance. And it's not great to do that anyway.

But being blinders taught me that judging a book by its cover is not the thing to do. I just, I love it. I think also it's allowed me to really experience and think about the things that I can do, not what I can't. The beautiful sounds and the soundscapes and the sound baths that I can go to. And I guess just really the darkness is a place of like

tranquility for me and a time for myself. And I think I've learnt that meditation is a massive part of my life. You know, I can kind of be in a room full of people. and kind of be one with myself. But really, if I am standing in a party full of people, I can be quite insular if I need to be. And I think that is a strength. Lucy Edwards and Arefa Akbar there.

And if you want to hear more from that program, including from listener Catherine, who takes us on her nighttime HGV lorry run, you know what to do by now. Head to BBC Sounds and search for the 26th of December program. That's it for today. Join Claire MacDonald. On Monday, she'll be talking to the geneticist,

Dr Karina Kern, who has worked with NASA's Space Health Programme. I hope you're enjoying the festive period until the next time. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time.