- British TikToker Millie Hart pranked her American husband with a fake festive ritual.
- She encouraged her partner Mark to bless the King and whisper to a pie.
A British TikToker convinced her American husband to take part in an elaborate festive ritual, insisting it was something she'd done back home for years. But it was totally made up.
Millie Hart has 1.1 million followers on TikTok and regularly posts videos about her experience living in the US, highlighting differences between both cultures, including their unique approaches to Christmas.
On December 5, she posted a video that showed her sitting beside her husband Mark, beneath an on-screen caption that explained she had fabricated a British Christmas tradition for her oblivious partner to follow.
@milliehart01 When i say im screaming #fyp #britishgirlinamerica #britishtradition
♬ original sound - milliehart01
At the start of the upload, Millie informed her husband they were going to manifest their 2024 goals onto a mince pie — a traditional British holiday dessert — and Mark appeared immediately confused.
She then presented him with Christmas crackers, which are cardboard tubes filled with a small gift or joke that are pulled apart by two people on Christmas day. According to British tradition, whoever gets the largest side of the cracker also typically gets a paper crown to be worn for the duration of the meal, but Millie decided to do things differently.
She earnestly told Mark to close his eyes, and repeat the phrase, "God save our King'' as they pulled open two crackers. She then told him they had to take the cracker handles, place them over mince pies, and whisper their goals for the new year.
The process became more elaborate from there. Mark followed Millie's lead as she removed the pastry lid of her mince pie, scooped out the fruit filling, and said they were going to perform a tarot card reading with the contents. Millie then went on to "read" his fruit, as someone might do with tealeaves.
Mark admitted he was "lost" as Millie then insisted they had to bless their festive dessert to complete the process. Millie appeared to hold in her laughter, before they picked up their selection of crackers once again and blew on the mince pie to finish the job.
At the end of the video, still in character, Millie asked Mark if he'd enjoyed the experience.
"It was weird, but yeah," he replied.
"When i say im screaming," Millie wrote in the caption alongside her upload, with 12 rolling on the floor laughing emojis.
The clip received 2.5 million views and 5,900 comments, many of which found the whole thing just as hilarious.
Some suggested Millie should have taken the joke even further and incorporated a little song for Mark to sing too, or suggested she should come up with more fake British traditions for her husband to follow.
Others praised Mark for completing the bizarre ritual out of respect for his wife and her culture, as he had no reason to believe it was fake.
Mark did eventually catch on to the trick however. In a follow-up video, Millie said her husband had since learned it was made up, but Mark could be heard in the background saying he was "completely convinced" at the time.
"That wasn't a prank, that was a stroke of genius," Millie said, adding that she had made the whole thing up on the spot rather than planning it out.
The UK has a wide variety of Christmas traditions that can seem a little unusual to people unfamiliar. These include attending pantomime shows, which are humorous retellings of fairy tales, usually starring actors in drag, and lighting a traditional Christmas pudding on fire for a flambé entrance.
It's perhaps no surprise Mark fell for the idea that blowing on a pie was one of them.