Memories from Christmas past

My brothers and I went hunting for our presents one year and I found my doll a while before Christmas. Everything went flat, all my excitement vanished in guilt and regret.
When I opened the box on Christmas morning my beautiful doll was still a surprise because my mother had made her so many lovely clothes. I never revealed that I’d found her early.

My mum would start preparing for christmas by making the cake and puddings weeks before.. Then we all make sticky hoop paper garlands and string them corner to corner across the ceiling and decorate a big tree with all the decorations, kept in a box in the attic all year. we always had an advent calender and so the build up to Christmas continued..OnChristmas eve we put out mince pies and sherry and out stockings by the fire. In the very early morning we found our stockings at the bottom of our beds always containing chocolate coins and a satsumer at the bottom. Mum would be up very early to prepare the turkey and roast potatoes. Then off to church.Lunch at about 2ish then the front door would be knocked and there was father Christmas with red coat,beard and a sack of presents.. Mum would always be having a bath at this time and rather extraordinarily we three children didn't question that! this was the never changing pattern of our christmases for years.. it was wonderful

My parents weren't well off but always kept a good Christmas. Their wedding anniversary was on the 23rd so we always celebrated that with a special meal at home. At some point over Christmas, neighbours would join us for drinks and nibbles and general frivolity! Invitations were rarely returned but my parents didn't seem to mind. My father was from Northren Ireland and enjoyed offering hospitality. Christmas Day always began with a visit to church after which opening of presents began in earnest!

My dad always attended Midnight Service on Christmas Eve and would come in and say you better get to sleep now I have seen Santa coming down the main road, I still don't sleep well Christmas Eve

Given 10/- to buy Christmas presents. Spent 7/6 on one for me🫢.

GrannySomerset I was in the Lone Pine Club! I still have a paperback somewhere, though I got most of my books from the local library in the 1960s.

NotSpaghetti thank you it's the only one that really sticks in my my mind 🙂🎄.

GrannySomerset I was a a big fan of Malcolm Saville and the lone pine 5 I use to save up my pocket money and order the book from the local newspaper shop.

Oh Gin, do you think we are the only surviving members of the Lone Pine Club? Yes, always a book at Christmas and mostly small presents though I do remember the year my godparents did up and furnished a doll’s house for me - must have been nearly five, I think. I played with it for years and eventually sold it to buy a watch when I was about to start secondary school.

I’d forgotten this one! When I was 6 and my mother had recently had her 4th, with an under 2 as well, and we had no car, it was agreed that my father would meet me from school at lunchtime and take me to visit Father Christmas in one of the big shops nearby (all a good 3 miles from our house).

The plan was for me to walk a short distance from school - on my own! - to an aunt’s flat, where my father would pick me up.
Of course the headmistress had to agree to this plan - I had to go and see her to be sure it was allowed.

I don’t remember the actual visit to FC at all, but I still remember the head - curly grey hair, looking very smilingly at me over the tops of her glasses and saying, ‘I wish someone was taking me to see Father Christmas!’

God bless Miss Bolwell, certainly dead decades ago now.
Can you imagine such a thing ever being allowed now?

Mum, Dad and I (aged 3, 4, 5, 6 &7) would decamp to my grandparents for the whole Christmas period. My lasting memory is of Grandad suspending the turkey from the mantlepiece and roasting it in front of a blazing fire, basting it every 20 minutes whilst Mum and Gran prepared vegetables in the kitchen.

I've said before that my best ever memory was when I was six and I was taken into the front room where the Christmas tree was. Standing in front of it was the incredible rocking horse my father had made for me! A dapple grey with a real horse hair mane and tail. At that age it was as big as a real pony to me. The other thing I always remember is the real candles on the tree and the way the heat from them made the pine smell of the tree so much stronger.

A couple of days ago DD was saying that her best present was the huge collection of clothes that her granny knitted for her Sindy doll. It cost pennies because she was able to use up all her odds and ends of wool but would have cost a fortune from a shop

Yes, like many on here my parents were poor, and they couldn't go too mad for Xmas. My dad had a good job before the war, a 'master baker' - made all sorts of speciality cakes for the big local bakery and their chain of shops. But he came back with a 'flour allergy' (result of malaria perhaps?) and couldn't do that job, had a menial job on the railways to make ends meet.

However, due to his baking background, we always had a wonderful Xmas cake and pudding - and he made them for relatives too. The big treat I recall was getting to scrape the bowl with the last of the cake mixture, then for our finished cake, eating every bit of marzipan I could get (still a sucker for the stuff!).

We did have a tree, but the room decs were mostly paper chains, and a couple of paper spheres that opened out from a small pack. My parents both died quite young, if they could see Xmas stuff these days I'm not sure if they'd know whether to laugh or cry?!

I remember in the 1950’s being taken into Liverpool for Christmas shopping . All the big shops had grottoes but the best one was in Blacklers. I remember one year seeing Torchy Torchy the Battery Boy , which I think at the time was a children’s TV program.

Oh so many lovely memories. We weren’t well off but it was always special. Making mince pies and pudding with Mum and her special Tunis cake. Paper chains and crepe paper streamers. The year I received a pale blue tutu that Mum and a neighbour had spent hours making it in secret for me.
Dad getting up early on Christmas Day to light the fire so it would be warm for us on Christmas Eve Dad always went to the shops to buy each of us a surprise gift just from him.
So magical in those days.

Lovely to read all these memories .
We didn’t have much money when I was small & one year mum made some bird decorations for the tree using pipe cleaners . It was a long standing joke for many years to come that the birds all had 4 legs!
Another year I remember even at the age of 4 knowing I must hide my disappointment that my present was a doll I already owned dressed amateurishly ( mum was no seamstress) in some white shiny material with some curtain net attached to her hair . She was presented as a bride but I couldn’t wait to get the awful dress off her & get my dolly back to her real self.
Mum was very loving though & had obviously done her best in those austere years . Christmas was a happy time

My best Christmas memory is of my big brother and I lying in our bunk beds on Christmas eve (when I was about 4) listening for the sound of Santa's sleigh bells. We definitely heard them .

We also took turns at tapping out the beat of various Christmas songs on the wall for the other to identify.

I have many other memories, of opening our presents, but this one of 'the night before Christmas' is actually the strongest.

Another from the same era is of us all in the car singing The Holly and the Ivy and other carols as we drove home from the swimming baths in our home town on a cold, pre-Christmas teatime.

My dad would always ask family and friends to save the gold plastic bottle tops of Bells whiskey..... and no, we weren't all slugging back the whiskey, it must have taken several years!

He would then drill a small hole in the top of each, pair them up and tie together with a red ribbon. Not sure where he got the idea from but I still have a pair that go on our tree every year.

I had a treasured copy of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" which I read and re-read on the days approaching the big day. I knew every detail of that book and still find the poem magical.

All the usual childhood memories, but also as a teenager getting my first suspender belt and nylons. Wore them to church on Christmas Day.

My best Christmas memory of childhood, was when we were totally broke. I must have been 5 or 6, and my parents couldn't afford a tree. My sister was/is very creative and imaginative. She used metal coat hangers crossed over and covered in existing tinsel and suspended together and from the ceiling with invisible sewing thread. She then hung our tree decorations with more invisible thread. It was so glittery and pretty - such an amazing memory...

My sister and I were talking about the turkey last Wednesday to her son, mum would always buy the biggest bird (us 4 girls and her) and NOTHING was wasted, every day we ate turkey, she and another of my sisters always argued over the neck. We're all still here and the turkey was kept in the oven, not fridge! Central heating wasn't invented here until 1992 I think, same time as the double glazing! We were healthy kids, ice on the inside of the windows! Christmas snow, not slush. Paper chains as mum couldn't afford anything else. The tree was always the biggest she could afford, spiky blighter, that we all decorated and listened to the needles dropping off over Christmas. We thought the easiest way to remove said trees, being to shake, then hoover the needles, bunged the Hoover up! After that, shake, SHOVEL, then hoover what's left! One year, we all got batteries off our dads mum, couldn't understand why, then we opened dad's present, we each had a tape recorder and a radio (this early 1980's), apparently eldest sister whinged that we all had the same, 2 years between all of us, so after that, and even to this day, Christmas is £25 each! I'm now 49, still £25! I agree with original poster as to how we used to feel, now I don't care, it's just another day, it's expensive. Christmas dinner is mum and me, dad comes to us and stays for a bit but we don't do a big spread like most, we have a roast dinner, he'll be back boxing day to help finish eat the small turkey crown!

I recall a Christmas when I was about 3 or 4 and waking up early to see the vague shape of a doll's pram at the foot of the bed. It was second-hand of course, with a pot doll, but best of all my auntie had knitted two outfits (one blue, one pink). How I loved dressing that doll. That auntie sadly died the following year, but I never forgot the outfits.

My mum worked at Woolworths before I was born 72 years ago and I still have six of the glass baubles she bought, as well as the little fairy that perches on the top of my tree. She has had to have a new pair of knickers since then (the fairy, I mean). I wonder what my mum would think.

There is a tradition where I come from people would come to your house for a mince pie and their Christmas drink in the days leading up to Christmas.
I loved meeting all the men my father worked with and we had heard stories about. One year one called "Danny Mesh" called and he was legless. My father had recently got a car and learned to drive, he was so proud to take his friend home.
Unfortunately, my most vivid Christmas memory is not a nice one. My father often had to work over the Christmas period and family get-togethers went on without him. There was a knock on the door when mum opened it a policeman said my father had had a serious accident at work and was in hospital. Luckily my grandparents were there to support her.

My parents weren’t very well off, in fact I suppose we were quite poor. They tried their hardest to give us three children a special Christmas though, a stocking each to wake up to and a present each when we all went downstairs. Nothing elaborate but still exciting to open. We always had a good Christmas dinner. It was so special back then and our parents gave us children a wonderful day.
My children had mostly what they asked for within reason. A real tree with lights and all the trimmings too. Always a house full of family and friends. Happy, happy days.

I don't remember how old I was when I bought my mother a novelty candle in the shape of a black cat, because she had a black cat, called Sixpence, who I absolutely adored. He was two years older than I and it took him the first seven years of my life to accept that I was a valuable addition to the family and not just an ummitigated nuisance.

The candle was still in the house when my father retired and the house was put up for sale approximately 25 years later, and my mother actually asked me if I would mind dreadfully if she did not take it with her to their new home. (Sixpence died when I was 14).

My mother absolutely adored Christmas and put money aside every week of the year for Christmas presents, decorations, the tree and the food.

Believe it or not: we were allowed to eat sweeties every day between Christmas Eve and 12th Night! The rest of the year the ration was what sixpence bought a child on Saturday!

One of my earliest memories is my 18 month old sister being found in her party dress and a pin striped red and white apron happily munching a piece of coal out of the coal scuttle right before Christmas Dinner.