Christmasses past.

We never had alcohol in the house during the year. However at Christmas my parents always got in some drink for the festive season. Always a bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream and a bottle of Advocat. Mum loved a Snowball and it was a treat for us kids to have a very diluted one complete with a glace cherry on top! To this day if I smell Bristol Cream Sherry I get a rush of nostalgia.

Wasn’t it dates with a fork?

I just looked up didlum because I've never heard of it before.

That was super Luckygirl! ? ?

Oh, Luckylegs9 haven’t heard the word didlium for years. I always thought it was a regional word. Wonder if didliums (or didlii) still exist now that all the factories which traditionally employed women have largely disappeared.

MrsCustard I remember those square boxes of tangerines too and the figs with the fork in the middle. My mum was still buying those in her early 80's bless her. You can still buy them but I've never liked them so don't know if the fork's still there.

My little grandson who is 4 rang me from NZ back in August worrying about how Santa was going to find him here and did we have a chimney? I found a magic key in a local shop which Santa can use if you don't have a chimney so he won't have that problem any more

My lovely dad was so excited about us girls opening our pillow cases full of present, he used to wake us up about five, we all pile into the bottom of their bed. Mom and dad were more excited than us. He would save every week in a didlum just for Christmas, so we had what we wanted. We had a real tree which we decorated with home made decorations and fairy lights, I still have the fairy that sat on the top, she has a bent wing now and an eye missing and needs a wash but she would fall apart. We had grandparent over for dinner, the aunts and uncles came for tea, lots of eating and playing games. Sad to think of all those people I loved gone now.

I remember the front room being dusted down and lots of fruit and nuts with nut crackers. I can also remember eating walnuts with salt for some reason and tangerines always in a decorative square box, also dates with a plastic fork thing in the middle, figs, turkish delight and orange and lemon jelly segments swirled in a round box. Lots of these things would be displayed on the polished old upright piano that no-one played properly.

There would be a pillow case, or in later years, a Santa Sack at the end of my bed, so exciting. I too can remember feeling a bit scared of the thought of Santa coming into my room in the middle of the night! Tangerines, coal etc did not feature, just pure surprises, always an annual and chocolate novelties. I can remember one year when I was quite small waking up and finding a dolls pram in a large box at the end of the bed.

We too had the fold out paper decorations, chinese lanterns and holly. When very young I can remember real
swirly candles being lit on the tree and the excitement of our first set of electric multi coloured lights later on.

Xmas day and boxing day was always spent with relatives who took turns to host. There was always plenty of drink, card games and an afternoon walk. One uncle used to do prize bingo for us children, which was always eagerly awaited in the evening after tea with some extra little presents to be taken off the tree. I can also remember great hilarity with my parents afterwards as we all suffered the gaseous effects of the over indulgence, brussle sprouts and pickles! Such lovely memories...

BBbevan that's the magic of Christmas sometimes - working out how Santa got some presents down the chimney! It always worried us because our house in Scotland didn't even have a one!

Jalima it does still go on, but thank goodness women have more choice now and don't have to stay with abusive husbands in the same way as 30 or 40 years ago.

Wilma It wouldn't have fitted in our house either. We lived in a flat above my uncle's shop. I have no recollection of how we got up to the flat. Father Christmas obviously knew, carrying a rollercoaster or not !!!!

We never had wine!
Sherry, beer and medicinal brandy and Corona (occasionally).

the domestic violence that some families suffered would be totally unacceptable these days.
Perhaps it is more hidden ArtyFarty because it still goes on.

Just reading through other people's childhood Christmas', I think most people compare the ones we had then with a moderate pile of presents, to the ones children have today with way too much. Our granddaughter aged 7 was compiling her list at our house the other day, after a while, having written a couple of things, she said "I can't think of anything else" to which grandad responded with "is that because you already have most of what you want" to which responded with "I think so". There were always things I wanted when I was a child, but unlike now, you might get something on your wish list certainly not all. My Dad was very bah humbug about Father Christmas and just told us from such an early age "he doesn't exist" so that was that, I never expected to see a sleigh landing on our roof something I loved to tell my children when they were little.

I remember going to mass, sometimes that was midnight mass, then we had breakfast which was grapefruit first then something like bacon and eggs. After which we were allowed to open our presents. My father would make a note of who sent what and then stood over us over the next couple of days to make sure we wrote thank you letters. That doesn't happen much these days. I did make a half hearted effort to make my children send a letter but it seemed to become such an uphill task, I ended up thanking whoever on their behalf. Cop out After all that my parents retired to the kitchen to set about cooking the turkey and accompanying veg, which seemed such a monumental task that I grew up with the notion that this was something I would never master. Now I ask myself what they were doing that caused them to become so stressed Christmas lunch was served in the middle of the afternoon when my parents still recoving from their culinary breakdown, let us the children have a watered down glass of wine, we weren't always that hungry because we'd stuffed half the contents of a selection box down our necks by then. I didn't appreciate the wine at the time, not realising how much I would in the future Then we watched tv for a while, or played with a new board game such as Monopoly, which could reduce me to tears if I didn't get any hotels or worse still ended up bankrupt. I always got a selection of books so I would often end up reading one of those. We were allowed to stay up late and watch a film. As well as visiting relatives during the Christmas period my father would sometimes get tickets for a West End cinema visit, I also remember being taken to see the ballets Copelia, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker during those years as a Christmas treat.

BBbevan a rollercoaster would never fit in our house!

Forgot all about going to church Christmas morning - mind you we didn't want to go with all our presents to play with - and it was a long walk. Eventually my Mum decided we could open one present before church and the rest after. That did the trick!

All these years later I go to church with my Mum and we open our presents afterwards.

Wonderful memories. Heartbreaking that not everyone had such a happy time. It’s easy to look back with rose tinted spex but the domestic violence that some families suffered would be totally unacceptable these days.

We used to put glue on to cotton wool, stick glitter on to it to decorate the Christmas tree - artificial snow.

Grandma70s ?

narrowboatnan I was beginning to think I was the only one who got a lump of coal in the bottom of the stocking (one of Dad's socks)! There was also always a tangerine, some sweets and some hankies. No matter what time we got up there was always a roaring fire - thinking back I think perhaps Mum and Dad never went to bed on Christmas Eve. Christmas morning after breakfast and opening of presents Dad, my brother and I would visit Gran whilst Mum stayed home and cooked the lunch!

There were the important rituals:
Singing Carols in the Square on Christmas eve followed by going to my friend's house to wait to go to midnight mass where we were in the choir.
Christmas morning, Father Christmas had been, but not in the lavish way of today, however one year he gave me a hula-hoop! Then Church, more singing!
Then home, and downhill from now on. The house filled with steam from the eternally boiled puddings and sprouts. Mother getting anxious.
Escape to feed the heifers with dad.
After Christmas dinner everyone is asleep, except me. Then the relatives start coming for tea. So laying the table begins.
Eventually there is the terrible family row when my mother starts complaining and my mother's mother starts unfairly accusing me of endless wickedness - she hates my father but I am an easier target, - they take their coats and in high dudgeon leave the house so that my mother can round on dad, the silent lost figure, and berate him for all her lost dreams. I wash up and sneak off to bed, with my mother's wailing droning on in the background.
Later, in my 60s, every `Christmas season, my Church Over 60s, asks us to bring memories of Christmas Past. The ladies sit round and eulogise of the incredible happiness they experienced at the hands of their saintly mothers.

Such lovely memories, I am wallowing in nostalgia.
Clip on candles for the tree, pink sugar mice, Girl Annuals, paper loop decorations. I remember a pillow case of presents by the bed and a big present by the tree plus presents from aunts etc sent by post.

No visitors we lived a long way from family and few cars and no public transport on Christmas Day. I had 2 older brothers to share it with, they got racing bicycles with drop handlebars, never got the hang of that. We all had bicycles but they were used all year to get places including school, boxes of handkerchieves. One year I got a Mickey Mouse alarm clock, not impressed. Sewing boxes sometimes more than one. Pedigree dolls with eyes that opened.

Great discussions between my parents duck, chicken, goose, .turkey but don't remember what we ate. Christmas pudding and iced cake which I made at school when I was 15. Home made mince pies only eaten at Christmas, roasting chestnuts on the fire and using the coal tongs to pick them off, Going carol singing.

Don't remember the smoking set.

BBbevan - I thought a rollercoaster seemed rather a big present!

Sorry, A dolls cot, pram or roller skates. I must remember to preview?

Despite my parents not having much money after the war, we had lovely Christmasses. We made a lot of things. I can remember shaping silver milk bottle tops over my finger, and threading them on cotton to hang on th Christmas tree. We had a stocking. One of my Mum's old ones and a big present. Collections year, or a pram or rollercoaster. Everything was downstairs in the living room. My Dad would creep downstairs to see "If he had been". My sister, Mum and I waited at the top of the stairs.
We had dinner on our own but then went up to see our grandma's who lived in the next village. We got colouring books, books, jigsaw and beautifully knitted cardigans or jumpers.
We still ,now with our GDs do the waiting at the top of the stairs

Annodomini’s post yesterday reminded me of the Christmas I nearly spent in hospital. It was 1949 and I was nine years old. I had had an emergency operation for mastoiditis, but was recovering by Christmas and was allowed to go home for Christmas Day. Most of the time I was in hospital, though. There was an entertainment by the doctors, a mock operation where they retrieved various items from the ‘Patient’s’ insides, including a string of sausages. I thought this the funniest thing ever. I watched it sitting on the knee of lovely nurse Ogden, who had been very kind to me throughout.

There were carols, and a Christmas tree with little presents. I got a needle case which for some reason I treasured for years (in spite of hating sewing). I remember my children looking at it 30 years later.

It wasn’t a children’s hospital. There were numerous old ladies in the ward. I enjoyed talking to them as soon as I could get up. One of them asked me if my mother plucked my eyebrows, an astonishing question to me. Of course she didn’t - I just had rather nicely shaped eyebrows!

I remember my parents saying how grateful they were for the NHS, which had only being going for a year and meant all this treatment was free.

Oh you can't beat watching a child when they're excited about father Christmas coming! I used to love it when my daughter was a little girl, and still gullible.