Christmasses past.

Thank you Luckygirl, that was a lovely reminder of times past.

sharronr I empathise. Christmas Day was usually fraught in my house and there would be a ding dong before ever the meal got to the table. However on Boxing Day we went for the afternoon to friends of my parents and because they were such loving warm people, especially Auntie as we called her, Christmas retained its excitement and sparkle. My children have happy memories of Christmas and try to recreate their childhood Christmases for the grandchildren so my parents didn’t spoil it for later generations.

Ours was a family affair, we would often go to my Aunty and Uncles when we were young on Boxing Day as well as Christmas Day. Later on we would just be a family of 5, mum dad big sister brother and youngest sister that’s me
When we got married we would go to each parents home and than when we had children we stayed at home and they came to us. We have kept up the tradition although parents have gone, and my son we spend ours at my lovely d and lovely gd. Well d only lives round the corner.
My memories, is small gifts and good food when I was little.

We had Christmas dinner and presents on Christmas Eve as my mother grew up in Denmark. Daddy was a GP, so one of the other doctors took his calls on Christmas Eve and Daddy was on duty for him as well as his own practice on Christmas Day.
Sometimes my Danish grandmother and aunt came for the whole of Christmas, sometimes my Scottish grandparents.
Christmas Day we had a British Christmas dinner Christmas Eve the Danish one.
We had visitors on Boxing Day and on one or two other days between Christmas and New Year and on Hogmanay.

Christmas changed when my grandparents died, one after the other in the space of three years. I was 13, 14 and 15 at the time. It never really was the same again.

However, we invited other elderly relations instead of the grandparents, and made new traditions.

I still love Christmas, New Year not so much, as it was often rather rowdy in Scotland, where Ne'erday (Jan. 1st) most definitely is a holiday.

We had two chickens in a run in the garden which were earmarked for Christmas dinner in 1952. My father had never killed a chicken, but one of his friends told him to lay the chicken on the ground, put a board across its neck and then pull its head up suddenly which would kill it. Unfortunately the chickens did not know the drill. He let the first one out, chased it all round the garden, wrestled it to the ground and eventually got the board across it, stood on each end and wrung its neck. He then went through the same pantomime with the second chicken. It took all day and he was exhausted. When my mother came home from work he told her they were ready for plucking and were hanging behind the pantry door. She opened it and saw they were tied by their feet, hanging on a hook. She was pleased, but when she touched one it bit her! We had horribly expensive roast beef that Christmas and the hens lived to a ripe old age back in their run!

My dad was a Christmas nut so everything was totally OTT. He used to make the Christmas decorations and we had paper ones that were carefully packed up each year ready to bring out in mid-December. Dad used to cover a sweet jar with cotton wool and make it look like a snowman. He would also make an alpine scene using a cardboard box and salt with little figures skiing and sledging. Mam used to save all year so we could have the extras like sweets and lemonade. She also baked mince pies etc.

Christmas started on Christmas Eve when mam had got all her cleaning and prep done. We'd have our tea and settle down then mam would open the jar of sweets. She'd been buying a quarter of Quality Street every week for a couple of months. Then dad would open the lemonade. It was a huge treat.

As we got older Christmas morning started earlier and earlier. Then one year there were no presents at the end of the bed. My sister and I thought it must still be the middle of the night but eventually daylight arrived and we could hear mam and dad downstairs. We started to cry because we'd obviously been so naughty that Father Christmas hadn't come. Mam called us downstairs and to our joy when we went into the living room our presents were there. Mam had asked Father Christmas to leave our presents in the living room because we got up too early if he left them upstairs.

Christmas dinner was usually a capon. Then alternate years we would go to a friends house or they would come to ours. It was the Peter Kay moment. Men with roll ups between their lips carrying chairs of all shapes and sizes. A table made up of two or three tables that were all slightly different heights so with that and the odd chairs no one was seated at the same height. Boxing Day we always went to tea at Grandmas. Grandad had leg ulcers and I was a clumsy child (I'll leave the rest to your imaginations lol). He would shout at me, I would cry and Grandma would shout at him lol.

Though I have painted a cheerful picture of our family's Christmases, I have missed out the miserable one. Early in December, just 6 years old, I was rushed to hospital with a bad dose of pneumonia - antibiotics were not generally available at the time. I was still there, though much better, at Christmas. I lay awake on a frosty Christmas eve, convincing myself that I could hear sleigh bells. In the morning there was a pillow case full of toys and, most importantly, books and in the afternoon my parents were allowed a rare visit. I especially loved my Rupert Annual which I read from cover to cover - three weeks in hospital turned me into a very competent reader! Five days later, I was allowed to go home but none of my presents came with me. They might have been infectious! However, I had a second Christmas at home which was followed by the wonderfully snowy winter of 1947!

So interesting to read our very personal experiences.

Christmas in Scotland for me in the 60s and early 70s are all happy memories for me (except one). We had long socks as stockings on our beds with a paper wrapped mandarin and a tissue wrapped 2/- coin (probably loo roll when I think about it! , plus a few small stocking filler presents from Santa Claus. Downstairs our presents were in little piles - one for each of us - and these would be from grandparents, aunts and uncles. We were allowed our presents in our room one year when all 3 of us shared a room, but we were opening them five minutes after my parents brought them in! My parents gave us one 'main' present, usually one of the many things we wanted before Christmas and included in our letters to Santa Claus. There was always a selection box and other Christmas sweet things like the chocolate smoking set! Nothing was extravagant though, we didn't have the money, but my parents always did us very well and we were never disappointed. I know now how much we were loved by all these members of the family.

Everyone came to our house for dinner because we were the only local grandchildren. But us children and my Dad were such fussy eaters, plus my paternal grandfather had no teeth, so we always had mince (which we children weren't keen on) - plus it was cheap. Pudding was trifle. We never ate other meat, fish or poultry at any time of year, but we would eat cold meat like corned beef and ham and egg roll, fish cakes and fish fingers! Dreadful! After dinner we children played with our presents, usually a board game or cards came out and we usually ended up fighting and in tears from being overtired. Adults had a few drinks after dinner, some a few too many, but it was a happy day. I don't remember Christmas TV, although we did have one.

The one Christmas in Scotland I don't have happy memories of is the year I was ill. In those days we went to several work's Christmas parties as each male(!) family member got tickets for us. This was brilliant for us children, but it did expose all three of us to what ever illness was doing the rounds like chicken pox and measles. One of us would get it and pass it on to the two of us (none of us were ill at the same time of course). One year I woke up on Christmas morning with measles (I think) and it broke my heart to feel so ill that I couldn't enjoy Christmas (never forgotten it and I tried so hard to rally!

When we moved to England in 1975 Christmas was changed forever. There was just the 5 of us on Christmas day, plus the occasional person my parents knew and invited when they found out they would be spending the day on their own. I am ashamed to admit we children always grumbled about a stranger joining us. Money was less tight, but my parents still didn't go overboard with gifts. We were earning pocket money, so we started buying little cheapy gifts for each other and our parents.

Christmas drinking laws were different in England, so there was more chance for my Dad to go out and get drunk, leaving my Mum to do everything - including picking him up from the pub/club in later years when my Mum learned to drive. It made for a less relaxing day because not only were other relatives not around for my Dad to charm or argue with, we children were older and wiser about my Dad with a drink on him. We never knew if he would be a happy drunk and fall asleep later, or an angry drunk looking for an argument. He could turn in an instant from the first to the second. He was never violent and he wasn't an alcoholic, but he became a weekend heavy drinker and my Dad's drinking influenced my own reluctance to drink alcohol as I got older. Relatives sent presents or money to my parents to buy them, so we still felt we did well on Christmas morning though.

When we lived in Scotland, all three of us children grew to hate Hogmany and New Year because of the drinking. The rounds of parties where we got money from adults we didn't know well and drank enough Vimto to fill a swimming pool under the table with any other children there, when often we really wanted to go home to bed. If the party was at our house, we were sent to bed at a reasonable time, but the noise (laughter and singing) kept us awake. Somebody with a drink on them heading for the loo would always open the bedroom door to see the adorable sleeping children, waking us up if we'd managed to get to sleep. They'd be hauled away by some kind person and the door would be closed again. We were loved as children and we loved back, because our family was close and we had none of the problems with divided loyalties blended families can have. As an adult the divided loyalties started when my parents divorced and DH's mother died.

Changed times.

Just said this on another thread but loved Christmas as a child and loved it with my young ones but now they are older and spread out it's just not the same, however we work at Christmas now so gives a different meaning now but still ok

Hollycat that's so funny and a great family Christmas memory!

Ah ,,,Rupert annuals, Mary Mouse books, magic painting books, folded paper chains pinned to the ceiling! A lot of memories came back reading other posts!
I grew up in the 1950s and as others have said we had chicken as a treat for lunch. I had a pillow case with ALL my presents, in including those from my parents and uncles and aunts etc, (My mother explained that thy'd been sent to Fathr Christmas for him to deliver!). There were no more downstairs.
On Christmas Eve we decorated the artificial tree with thesame ornaments each year , put up the paper chains and my mother decorated the cake. Then my parents and brother went out carol singing with a chapel group but I had to stay in with my godmother who always came to stay. I shard a bed with her and wasn't allowed to open any presents till she woke up - I remembr waiting for what seemed like hours looking at the full pillow case!
After breakfast was chapel, then lunch, then played with my new presents and in the evening, family games which I was allowed to stay up and join in as I got older. A lovely day,
I'm so sorry to hear of some of the sad memories of some people on this site as mine are very happy.
Oh, and yes I do remember Kunzle cakes, but that was much later, in the 60s I think.
Does anyone remember an annual calls Fudge and Speck? It was my favourite and I had it alternately with Rupert Bear.

Christmas Day when I was growing up was quiet, just Mum, Dad & me. I could open my stocking presents before Breakfast, then it was Breakfast, get dressed & we all opened our presents. Quiet afternoon, no TV before 1963 so we mostly read or listened to the radio.

Boxing Day was a different matter, we went to one of my Aunts for the afternoon & evening, huge family gathering, lovely tea followed by card games.

I can remember working on New Year's Day, put a bit of a dampener on celebrating New Year's Eve

There was always at least one relative who could bang out a tune on the piano ( more, in my family) and I enjoyed all the singalongs as a child. That would be after Christmas Day though, when visitors dropped by.

I remember being really excited when the crepe paper decorations went up on the ceiling - that was the start of Xmas for me - the build up. Xmas Eve not being able to sleep - someone creeping in my room and putting a pillowcase on the end of the bed. Me feeling it with my feet. In the morning, the excitement of looking to see what was inside. I know there were toys and an annual, but all I can really remember is a piece of coal wrapped in xmas paper (put there by my grandfather) and some tangerines. Lovely Xmas dinner - the grown ups having sherry. One year I was given a doll, which I felt I was really too old to have, a cousin of mine stayed and she had a dark haired doll and I had a blonde one. I felt hers was better than mine!! But I was too embarassed to take any friends to my room to see this big doll!! It wasnt always picture perfect in my home, but Xmas I always remember fondly and I still love it now, I love the build up. Unfortunately there is not a lot of family left now to enjoy it.

P S So it is really now that I get excited for my little grandson, and enjoy seeing him opening his presents.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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!

Grandma70s ?

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