What does pantomime mean anyway?

We had a pantomime at our school on Thursday morning which meant that we didn't have to do any school work but instead watch a bunch of amateur performers in some ridiculously silly musical performance. For those who haven't experienced the proper British pantomime, I'll quickly explain. Although it's called a pantomime, there is no mime-like quality to it. It's just the term used for a silly musical usually based on some ancient fairytale or other that is performed sometime around Christmas. Why Christmastime? I haven't the faintest...it just is. And the crazy thing is that these pantos (as they're called) pop up in various professional theatres all over the UK and, get this, fairly famous actors CHOOSE to star in these productions. I mean, these are the "boo," "hiss," and "cheer" type shows...the kind where the audience shouts out to the hero warning him that the villan is sneaking up behind him. It is mad!!! You can imagine my surprise when I tried to teach one of my first drama lessons to kids in London when they kept arguing that pantomime didn't mean that they couldn't talk during our miming lesson. Finally, the teaching assistant had to explain this whole British pantomime thing to me. So I dropped the "panto" and stuck with "mime" and this seemed to solve the problem. It's just another one of those crazy culture shocks. I have, of course, seen a few pantos since and actually found them really entertaining.