Christmas was nothing like the commercial spend-fest that it is now, but it was our biggest holiday of the year, and we always looked forward to it enormously. Mum and Dad went to great lengths to make sure Christmas was very special, even when there was clearly little money to spare.
We always had a real tree which stood on a box or table covered with crepe paper, and was surrounded by gifts which grew to huge heaps of presents by the time Christmas Day came. The CAV Christmas party was a highlight of advent – what seemed like hundreds of children sitting down to tea at long tables, with games and music, and a present from Santa for every single one of us! They had parties on different weekends for different age groups, so we didn’t usually all go together, but we’d see school friends there as CAV was certainly among the biggest, if not the biggest, employer in town.
Once schools broke up for the holidays our excitement mounted every day. There was an advent calendar (just one, I believe) to help with the countdown to Christmas, and part of the anticipation was for new clothes and toys, because we didn’t have a lot of either. On Christmas Eve we’d have mince pies and sausage rolls, and before we went to bed, we’d leave a plate with mince pies and a glass of sherry ready for Father Christmas when he came down the chimney.
When Christmas Day arrived, we would all be awake very early – in the middle of the night, in fact! Mum and Dad had probably only just gone to bed when we woke up, having played Santa and delivered our sacks of presents – a pillowcase full of presents at the end of each of our beds.
We would have written our letters to Father Christmas, assuring him we’d been good and asking for the things we wanted to find in our “stockings” (pillowcases). One year, we wanted a Cindy bedroom set, and Mum and Dad had a friend (Danny Rawlinson’s dad) make little dolly beds for us – presumably the real thing would have been outside their budget, but the hand-made ones were better anyway. Another present I always remember was the beautiful black doll Jayne got one year; it must have been a really unusual thing in the sixties, especially in a small rural town.
“Has he been?” “Yes! He’s been! He’s been!” Excited squeals and shrieks and we would all be wide awake in that freezing bedroom, hurriedly emptying our sacks of gifts, showing one another and exclaiming over everything. Mum, Dad, or both would usually come in to watch and enjoy our happiness before we’d finished, and Christmas Day would have started, as there was no chance we’d go back to sleep!
Often Suze’s godparents, Thelma and Ray, would have sent new dresses for all four of us to wear at Christmas, and we’d all be dressed up for Christmas Day.
Food was another huge part of Christmas and some of my strongest memories revolve around those smells and flavours. Like every other household in the sixties, our Christmas meal was very traditional: a huge roast turkey dinner with all the trimmings. There was always doubt whether the turkey would fit in the oven, or whether everything would be cooked and hot at the same time. We loved cranberry sauce (not bread sauce), roast potatoes, Brussels sprouts, parsnips & carrots, and cream with the Christmas pudding (not brandy butter). On Boxing Day we’d have a honey roast ham and cold turkey, with salads, pickles, and Pimm’s for the grown-ups (cream soda for us), usually followed by a huge trifle.
Dad would be asleep in an armchair after Christmas dinner, with his glasses slipping across his face à la Eric Morecambe. We’d watch a film on television, play board games at the table, or play with our new toys. There must have been disagreements and squabbles; there must have been cooking disasters or bad behaviour, but all my memories of Christmas are one hundred per cent rose-tinted, and I’m not sorry about that at all.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Fading Memories 