Figure 1.-- |
|
I recall our familiy Christmases during the 1970s in considerable detail. Every damily has their own traditions, but I suspect our experiences were fairly typical. Our family consisted of mum and dad and my brother and I. Usually our grandmothers stayed with us. Our maternal grandfather died when I was 4 and my paternal grandfather chose to have no contact with any of the family after deserting my paternal grandmother (my nan).
We had advent calenders every year hung on the dining room wall. Both my brother and I had one each. In my early years, this would just be a card one but as we got older we started getting ones that would have small chocolates in them each day.
Christmas Eve at my parents' house when I was growing up always necessitated a shift in usual living arrangements. As both my gran and nan would come to stay most years, my elder brother and I would be usurped and obliged to sleep elsewhere. Arrangements shifted every year depending on our
maturity - sleeping at the feet of our parents' beds, sharing a room, sleeping on a mattress in the dining room or on the sofa in the living room. At an early age this was a small adventure in itself, but when I reached double digits in years I started to object to being usurped from my own
bedroom.
Something my parents always used to do until I was old enough to know better
was putting us to bed fairly early on Christmas Eve - about 6 or 7pm. About
half an hour later, knowing we would have settled down but would not yet be
asleep, we would start to hear sleigh bells from somewhere we couldn't
identify. I'm sure it was just downstairs, but we never could pinpoint the
position. Clearly this was heralding the arrival of Santa Claus on his
sleigh but until I was about 8, this sound terrified me as it was something
clearly out of this world and paranormal. They might as well have told me
that Santa Claus (of course, we usually say Father Christmas in the UK) was
a monster who lived under the bed. I never did find the bells, by the way!
Speaking of under beds, it was under my mum's bed where the presents were
stored every year and more than once did I dispense with the idea of
delaying gratification and go looking to see what I had been bought a couple
of weeks in advance. If my parents were at home this had to be done very
quietly as their bedroom was over the living room and you could hear the
floorboards creak. Christmas lists would be written formally by being sat
down at the dining room table at the start of December. I remember when I
was about 6 asking for 'a small box of five pound notes' clearly having no
conception of money. We always did very well for Christmas presents,
especially in 1973 when my dad had been unwell for much of the year and my
brother and I got presents from almost everyone who knew him. This event is
recorded on ciné film shot by my grandfather shortly before he died. The
success of Christmas was often measured by the quantity of presents
received. We also have an audio cassette recording of Christmas Day in 1975
with the unwrapping of presents.
Christmas morning was the time to open our presents. Come Christmas morning, we would usually awake at about 5am and be kept having to kick our heels until about 7am. In the meantime, we would content ourselves with checking the contents of our stockings. We had one each, a
blue one and a red one. One had a cut out of Father Christmas on it but I
can't remember the other. Both had an arcaded white trim along the top and
were looped over the bottom of the bedsted with a small ribbon. Both
stockings were made entirely of felt. In the stockings would be loads of
cheap toys bought from the local toy shop; a real lucky dip of things we
hadn't asked for but our parents thought we might like. There would also be
a little net bag of chocolate coins and a selection box by one of the UK's
main confectioners, either Rowntrees or Cadburys (this last my parents still
do for me to this day in spite of being in my 30s!) Not once did I ever
wake up to find my parents in the room, though when I was about 14 my dad
came into the room wearing a Santa hat and a stupid beard made of cotton
wool, slamming the door open, yelling and making as much noise as possible.
He wasn't the worse for drink - it was just very funny.
By the time we had roused my parents against their will to get up at an
ungodly hour we would be ushered downstairs but kept out of the living room.
To this day I don't know why. It would seem to take forever. Eventually we
would be given permission to go in. The Christmas tree, decorated just as
any other tree would be today with fairy lights, tinsel, decorations and a
fairy on the top would be lit up. Presents for the adults would usually be
arranged around it; in my early years we used to get so many toys that
nothing would be seen of them until the day itself and virtually nothing for
us would be wrapped and on show. Both my brother and I would have our own
sack - a large white PVC sack about the size of a large bin liner with a
colour print of Father Christmas on a sleigh on it - which would be filled
with our presents. Unwrapping of gifts would be done in a frenzy, often
ignoring everyone else whilst doing it. Nowadays, I hate unwrapping
presents in front of anyone and dislike the ceremony of it all.
Once this was all complete and my dad and nan had exhausted yet another roll
of camera film then mum would go out into the kitchen and start preparing
the Christmas meal. Some of the other adults would give her a hand, but it
was very much her domain. We would spend the morning playing with our toys
and watchng TV. For the meal itself, the extra leaves would be pulled out
of the old dining room table and serviettes put out for the only time in the
year! Sometimes a candle would be lit. The adults would have a bottle of
wine and we all had Christmas crackers to pull at our places. There were
never enough seats so I was often sat on a stool that was too high or too
short for the table.
Boxing Day was, and still is, a bit of a non-entity in the UK in modern
times. It is just a guaranteed day off work. We would sometimes go out for
a walk to the woods across the road or visit other members of the family.
Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web holiday pages:
[Return to the Main English Christmas page]
[New Years]
[Valetines]
[St. Patrick's Day]
[Easter]
[Fourth of July]
[Haloween]
[Thanksgiving]
[Christmas]
Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Introduction]
[Activities]
[Biographies]
[Chronology]
[Clothing styles]
[Countries]
[Topics]
[Bibliographies]
[Contributions]
[FAQs]
[Glossaries]
[Satellite sites]
[Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]