Christmas memories..

Sazz1 ♥️

Living with my granny who bred chickens Christmas eve was her plucking and preparing the chickens and people knocking on the door to buy for Xmas Dinner. The house smelt awful.
As a teenager I lived with my mum who was very poor. My sisters were crying when I walked home from work as we had no money for a Xmas tree. So I walked to the jewellery shop, sold a ring an ex boyfriend had given me and bought a small tree. Sisters and I made paper lanterns with crayons to decorate it and were delighted.

That’s so sad kwest ?

My most poignant Christmas Day memory was when I was 26 years old. My father had died very suddenly earlier that year.
My husband , myself and our two small children were spending Christmas Day with my Mum. I had hardly ever seen her cry in my whole life but I watched her in the kitchen stirring the gravy while tears poured silently down her face. I vowed that next year would be different and that she would never have to be in that position again.
What did I learn? Be careful what you wish for. Five months later my mother had a heart attack and died.

Us and cousins pinching raw sausage meat and eating it!! When mum and aunty making stuffing! Did we all die? Nope!

There was lots of families in our neighbourhood when I was a child and our family knew everyone by name. We would watch out of window on Christmas Day and see who had been gifted a new bike, roller skates, dolls prams, scooters, pogo sticks........you name it, they were out in all weathers showing off their shiny new presents! Oh, what joy it was to see.

Happy Christmas everyone! Have the best day possible

Lexisgranny we used to live by a bakery and I remember going with my father to take our huge turkey to be cooked, you put your name on a matchstick and stuck it in the bird
I would go back later for us to collect it warm and cooked to perfection, my tray was to have some before going to bed

My grandad worked as a tailor in Savile Row and he would get his turkey from Soho Market.

He would hang a meat hook on the mantlepiece and suspend the turkey from a string in front of the fire from about 4 o'clock in the morning, basting it from a tin on the hearth every half hour until lunch at 1 o'clock.

Nobody ever got food poisoning!

Back in the 50/60s companies /business etc sent Xmas gifts. I can remember the smell of apples (crate of) and the accompanying whole wheel of Stilton cheese that arrived at Xmas for a few years.
Yes the cheese was eaten, but a whole cheese?
We had at the time a coke fired heating system.
Mum getting fed up with the smell of the cheese put the remains in the coke fire.
The whole village had smelly black smoke to contend with. A few knocked on the door to see if the house was OK, not on fire.
Mum was mortified, Dad not amused.
The apples faired better.
I'll never forget that smell.

My Mum always managed to burn something on Christmas Day
Usually the Christmas Pudding when water boiled dry in the steamer
Too much, before lunch, sherry methinks !

My mum was very reticent about trying capon.

Calistemon

We used to have a capon.

Perhaps turkeys hadn't been discovered when I was a child.

We always had beef because my parents didn’t like turkey, but I wasn’t over keen on beef. When I met my husband to be we used to have Boxing Day dinner at his mum’s house and she always bought a capon, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. It was delicious, especially compared to mum’s over cooked beef.

My first Christmas dinner I cooked when I was married was turkey with all the trimmings. The following day we had it cold. As my husband was carving it he pulled something out of the inside. Yes you guessed it, it was the plastic bag with the giblets in! I never lived it down

MissAdventure

My friend and the whole family, all went round to her mums, every Christmas eve.
They stayed all over christmas and always seemed to have great fun.
After a good few drinks on Christmas eve, they all went to bed, and a while later my friend was woken up by her mum screaming.
"Michele, quick! Terry's in here and he's got his thing out!"

Michele's husband has wandered into her mums room, thinking he was in the toilet, and was poised over her mums bed, about to wee...

A Christmas to remember for sure! They won’t forget that one. ?

My friend and the whole family, all went round to her mums, every Christmas eve.
They stayed all over christmas and always seemed to have great fun.
After a good few drinks on Christmas eve, they all went to bed, and a while later my friend was woken up by her mum screaming.
"Michele, quick! Terry's in here and he's got his thing out!"

Michele's husband has wandered into her mums room, thinking he was in the toilet, and was poised over her mums bed, about to wee...

MissAdventure

I love the bed wetting!

I can remember it like it was yesterday. Not good ?

I love the bed wetting!

Babycham not baby ham ?

My memories are of church parade with our girls brigade, singing carols at our school carol concert, twinkling lights which glistened on my mums tree that she got out every year, baby ham and snowballs for the adults, lemonade for us. An Orange in the stocking, my sister being so excited she wet herself which wasn’t so good as we shared a bed. Then, Boxing Day, the adults all having a good party with us all meant to be asleep upstairs.

I’ve just found the babycham advert from the 1960’s. We were easily pleased in those days!
youtu.be/7rA3K0VQWZg

Ive got those babycham glasses they are so cute.
My Dad used to make us snowballs with the cherry on a stick and my Mum used to have port and lemon, I still have a port and lemon on Christmas day. Cheers!

My aunt was given a massive turkey by a farmer friend. It wouldn't fit in the oven so it had to be hacked into portions before cooking.

I’d completely forgotten about the cherry on a stick. That’s how my Mum used to have hers!

With a cherry on a stick?

I found the babycham much more attractive when I was a student and went to a party where I was introduced to brandy with a babycham mixer.