Christmas memories..

I used to do that with the wish bone and pinkies with our children but in recent years forgot,so now have 7 grandchildren
and will start again,thanks for the reminder.Nice to read about the turkey stories.Merry Christmas and hopefully a better 2022.

My mums friends house had a bar in the corner of the room, with those glasses displayed in it.

Nice touch Grannynannywanny! ?

I don’t remember the cherry brandy Urmstongran but my Mum’s Christmas tipple was a babycham. Like you I don’t recall alcohol in the house other than Christmas and new year. I looked out my Mum’s babycham glasses this week. I’m going to serve trifle in them tomorrow and we’ll use her best dinner set.

Oh yes.
3 balloons and a dangler, pinned up at strategic places on the ceiling.
Then from the 4 corners to the big light, you put some paper chains.

Oh and the only alcohol mum & dad ever got in was at Christmas time. Mum loved a glass of her favourite tipple ... de Kuyper cherry brandy. Hmm. Wonder if they still sell it?
?

Himself and I went out for a short walk earlier and it was nice passing houses with Christmas lights. We started reminiscing about Christmases past and how it was when we were nippers.
God the young adults of today would laugh at how our houses were ‘decorated’ for the festive season! Paper chains, pinned with drawing pins to the centre light then looked into the four corners of the room. It would be deemed ‘common’ today! And as a Virgoan who likes symmetry I didn’t like that our ‘big light’ (hello Peter Kay) wasn’t dead centre...
?

Then bunches of balloons in the corners of the room (told you we was common). Blown up with a cardboard pump thingey as so many balloons weren’t good for puff. Some bunches had the long wiggly balloon in them.

Late Christmas Eve the ‘order boy’ would cycle round with a huge cardboard box of groceries. The early start of home deliveries who knew?

We too had a small gas fridge. I’d forgotten about that! Thanks for the memory.

Oh god I’m actually crying laughing here! It’s fab.
“Bum to all” on the steamed windows! Priceless. ??
Soft yellow sprouts! ??
dinner at 1pm in case we were lolling about enjoying ourselves!

The best giggle I’ve had all week.
Laughter certainly is the best medicine.
Metronidazole is pants.

TBC

When I think of Christmas as a child I remember walks to the church for midnight mass in the frosty air, holding my father's hand. Inside the church the smell of incense and candles was as familiar to me as my mother's perfume. The Latin service the carols, the rustle of vestments, gave me a feeling of security I've never felt since.

I’m loving this thread already MissA and I’m only just up to EV! The one about the asthma attack brought on by feathers was SO funny (sorry bet it was awful at the time). I’m going to make a cuppa now then enjoy reading all the rest!
Perfect Christmas Eve entertainment MissA thank you.
??

One year, the turkey must have let out more juice (?) than usual.
It spilled out into the oven overnight, and seeped all over the floor.
Mum went out there at some ungodly hour and slipped over.

We used to make ginger beer with a ginger beer plant, one Christmas the turkey was in the pantry and a bottle exploded leaving bits of glass all over the turkey, we spent most of Christmas Eve picking it all off, this was 60 years ago, happy memories with Mum and Dad

I remember my mother bought a Capon for Christmas Dinner as a very special treat and my ungrateful self feeling I didn't want to eat it because it smelled. Was that just me or did food smell stronger years ago I wonder.

We always had a brace of ducks, a gift from a farmer uncle, proper farmyard ducks that had swum on ponds.

Mum used to partially cook them the night before, as she never thought they would be ‘done’. A wonder we never had food poisoning as we had no fridge, but they would rest in the cold pantry on Christmas Eve night.

She would also make ‘giblet pie’ which was Christmas Eve tea. As I recall, it was Mum’s rather thick pastry covering the heart, gizzard, neck of said ducks, not the liver as it was considered not good to eat, don’t know why. All in a watery stock. Not very appetising to us as children.

Calistemon

Boxing day bubble and squeak with cold cuts is the best meal

Absolutely..... and with lots of pickles.

We kept chickens for their eggs but my parents were very hard up so my Dad asked an experienced neighbour to kill one of the chickens for Christmas dinner.

I spent the whole of Christmas Day sitting on the doorstep calling him a murderer. I must have been 5. I expect I ruined Christmas, but anyway, he never did it again.

We also had Capon and guess what I have for tomorrow?

For a few years from 1945 my wife's parents always had a turkey in the parcel post from relatives in the Irish Republic. They used to send butter as well!

We used to go to my nans on boxing day, and I loved that, too.
She always bought me the sort of present that I think mum and dad secretly disapproved of.

We had Capon not Turkey, and all the trimmings.Mum used to do the cooking helped my myself and my Brother. Dad went to the pub to have drinks with his mates and came home to a lovely fire roaring in the fireplace.I think after the dinner when we had listened to the Queens Speech, we played Monopoly which went in for days!
Those days in Liverpool I loved and will never forget.

I love bubble and squeak.
I never have it now.

My father losing his temper once again and throwing the Christmas tree down the stairs (we lived in a top floor flat)
He hated Xmas with a passion until the day he died aged 92.

I just remember my poor mum in a mood because my sister and I used to go out to the local disco on Xmas Eve and then sit in front of a huge dinner my mum had slaved over unable to eat it because we were a little hungover.... nowadays I'm in bed by 10pm on Xmas Eve with a cuppa. Merry Christmas everyone

Boxing day bubble and squeak with cold cuts is the best meal

I had a schoolfriend whose family was pretty hard up. Every year, they received a F&M hamper from a relative who was an actress. Their modest house had quite the Christmas feast. However, the best bit for me was returning to school to swap my cheese-and-tomato sandwich for all sorts of exotic foods from said hamper, in her lunchbox, which she hated, but her frugal parents needed to use to make the January penny stretch further.