Childhood memories of Christmas.

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oldherbaceous
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Thought this topic might bring forth some funny memories, or i suppose sad ones too!!!

My starter is, why did it seem like a lifetime to get to number 24 on the Advent Calendar... :)
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Getting oranges in a sock at Christmas.
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oldherbaceous
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And knowing Peter, they are probably still in there..... :twisted: :)
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I try to re live some every Christmas, still have some of my Dads old tree decorations that get used, roasting chestnuts(already eaten a bag this year) cracking my nuts(oooh er) which I've also already started.
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Hot, sweltering hot! But other than that a full ham covered in wet cheesecloth & lasting for ages in the outside laundry room! It was smashing on the day as well, diamond cut, breaded and cloved!
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Having to sit down on Christmas afternoon while all the adults were snoozing off their Christmas lunch, writing thank yiu ketters for all my presents.

Jars of brightly coloured liquorish comforts in my stocking (when sweets were still rationed)
The same bottle of sherry being dug out of a cupboard year after year for adults to be given a tiny glass! (My parents were not big drinkers. Heaven knows what it was like by the time the bottom of the bottle had been reached,)

My mother buying a leg of pork and hanging it in a string bag from the apple tree to keep cool as we had no fridge.

The front sitting room being opened up for Christmas Day and Boxing day when relatives visited , the sliding doors between the two rooms opened up and the front room fire was lit. For the rest of the year the sliding doors remained firmly closed and the sitting room was like a museum!

The only time of the year when we could afford to eat chicken (I suppose they were pretty much all free range then,)

The same battle every year, about a week before Christmas, to try and get the Christmas Tree lights working.

Making paper chains with coloured paper and glue.

The year my batchelor uncle gave my very young brother a hot water bottle and a folding penknife for Christmas. That night my brother experimented with the two of them and stabbed the hot water bottle. i still recall the nightmare with all his bedding having to be removed and draped around chairs and on the clotheshorse overnight in front of the coal fire, trying to dry everything out before relatives arrived on Boxing Day ! My mother was totally distraught.

All those memories seem a very long time ago now. But at least we weren’t bombarded with Christmas adverts on TV starting in September. We didnt even have a TV !

OH, thanks for starting a fascinating thread. I will probably remember other long distant memories now my brain has been stirred, when I wake up at 3 am in the morning in those dark hours when everybody else is asleep!
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My memories are very much like yours Primrose - just post war.

We made crepe paper decorations by cutting it into strips and twisting two colours together then pinning them either in loops round the walls or crossing them across the middle. There were balloons too and a rather tatty fake tree that we put lights on with pictures of nursery rhymes and which were a challenge for Dad as there was either a loose one or a bulb had gone and they wouldn't light. I used to like the decorations that folded flat and when you opened them up they made a bell shape .

The formula for presents was one main present, usually a teddy or a doll, an annual, a game, a selection box and an orange. My uncles surprised me one year by giving me a train set as they were too embarrassed to ask for a nurse's outfit.

One year the cat got shut in the food cellar and had had a good feast on the cockerell mum had plucked for the dinner. I think it was served with rather more stuffing than usual and bacon strips to disguise the damage. No one threw food away when it was rationed. We always had sprouts, swede and mashed and roast potatoes all grown by Dad.

I remember being rather sceptical about Father Christmas from being very young as I couldn't see how a big fat man could come down the chimney especially as we had a Rayburn. He always ate his mince pie and drank his whisky though, leaving a few crumbs on the plate and an empty glass on the kitchen table.
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I got far more fun out of my children's Christmases than the ones I had when I was younger I did not have a very good childhood nothing springs to mind about the good times I was supposed to have had unfortunately it's left me bitter but my own family have a great time at Christmas I can't help spoiling the grandkids we have just bought our eldest grandson a motorbike for his present not a really expensive one but a nice Chinese job
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As a child Christmas day was a ritual, and not a particularly enjoyable one. It got better in my teens (wink wink)

Boxing Day was also a ritual each year but much more fun. We always went to South West London for tea with a couple I referred to as Auntie & Uncle but were really just very long term friends of my mother
Big tea, full spread layout and sometimes it developed into a full blown party. Great fun was Boxing Day

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We had candles on our tree in the 1950's, I remember a couple of close shaves with things setting on fire!!
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Oh Robo - feel sad that you didn't have a good time when you were young but glad now that you're feeling more festive through spoiling your grandchildren.

My memories are similar to others - the endless licking of strips of coloured paper to make paper chains, the horrible taste was worth it though. And the unbearable heat in the front room - and sitting down, with my younger brother to write nice Thank You letters. We didn't enjoy that part, at the time, but realise we were being taught manners and can now appreciate it. We've given up sending money and gifts to friends' children who cannot be bothered to write us a little thank you note. It just seems to be a lost art. I also remember lying in bed on Christmas Eve and I absolutely know I heard Santa's sleigh bells. My brother heard them too. We excitedly told our parents in the morning and they managed to keep a straight face - just about In later years I realised that they'd used the cat's collar which had a bell on it. ( I can confirm that the cat wasn't wearing it at the time.)
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Pa Snip
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Diane wrote: In later years I realised that they'd used the cat's collar which had a bell on it. ( I can confirm that the cat wasn't wearing it at the time.)



Just as well otherwise you would have westi after you for swinging the cat by the bells

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When Iwas a tiny child I could remember my dad putting my note to Father Christmas up the chimney for him. I was never able to work out the complexity of how it made its way further along the delivery chain. When I grew much older I realised there was a slope in the chimney further up just out of arms reach which was where my dad left the letter, eventually to be consumed in smoke and to smoulder away.

Does anybody remember those awful chimney fires which used to happen regularly when chimneys weren,t regularly swept and the soot caught fire? The flames would blaze quite spectacularly out of the chimney pot. My dad made a large solid metal sheet with a handle on it which was held across the fireplace to eliminate any air being drawn in at the grate and eventually the fire would then burn itself out. Before the days of the “Vac Sweep” getting the sweep In was a real performance. As much furniture as possible had to be evacuated from the room or it had to be dovered in dust sheets because the soot particle would spread everywhere and the whole room had to be thoroughly cleaned and washed down afterwards. Definitely not the “good old days” from a housewife’s point of view. No wonder my mum embraced central heating with open arms when it arrived!

And I recall the frantic food shopping for Christmas long before supermarkets were open every day except Christmas. Sometimes they would be shut for three or four days on the run if Christmas occurred Immediately before or after the weekend so if you ran out of anything or had forgotten a vital part of your festive food, you simply had to go without it . It was probably the last time when staff in the retail food trade actually got a a decent holiday break.
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oldherbaceous
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True to traddition since I left home, my Mum made the first batch of mince pies for me yesterday morning, two dozen of them and embarressingly i have to say, :oops: they have nearly all gone....well they are mourish. :)
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Primrose
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At this time of year the first freshly baked hot home made mince pies taste like food for the gods.

By the time one has reached Christmas Day and eaten one’s way through a plethora of indifferent tasting stodgy supermarket bought mince pies provided as obligatory festive nibbles at social functions I’m afraid the whole concept is beginning to pall and I’m more than ready to lay off them until the following December comes around !

These days however one has barely recovered from the mince pies before the Hot Cross buns start appearing!
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