Christmas past

We put our Christmas decorations up recently.  A largely uneventful affair with a tree, lights and various other festive paraphernalia.

I say uneventful not in the sense that it’s in any way boring or mundane.  I really enjoy putting the decorations up. Well, watching anyway.  It’s just that it’s not the same as it was when I was a child growing up in the 70s.

Of course, I was more excited back then, especially about Santa’s pending visit and the joy that would bring.  But it was a much more unpredictable and event-packed occasion than nowadays and mainly for all the wrong reasons!

Firstly, as soon as the (last available for miles around) tree was extracted from the roof of the car, 99% of the pine needles would immediately fall to the floor, leaving behind the saddest looking collection of bare twigs you'd ever seen.  Then there'd be the search for a bucket to put it in.  Unbelievably, we simply had nothing like that.

Next came the lights.  They would be in an unimaginable tangle and there would never be a plug on the end. That would have been removed to put on something else in our house such was my parent’s complete lack of any organisational or planning skills.  So, a plug would be taken from some other household appliance like a lamp for example to power them.

the reason for this map will be revealed shortly

It goes without saying that the lights would never work first time. Rather than getting a new bulb or set of lights though, my father would simply cut out the offending bulb housing and tape up the new bare-wire join with Sellotape.  Quite how we managed to not be burned to a crisp in a festive fireball I simply do not know.

There was no advent calendar packed with chocolates either.  We had the same one every year, with the doors shut as best they could to hide the pictures of snow or a candle that I'd memorised anyway.  And most of our decorations could be described as “low rent”!  The tinsel was reduced to just silver string, all in about 3 inch lengths, the baubles were mostly broken and the star would always fall off the top of the tree into the lethal pile of pine needles still in the carpet from previous years, and joined by the remaining 1% that had survived on the tree until now.

words really aren't needed
(this actually looks like our 1970s front room!)

Then Christmas Day would arrive.  My father would invariably be working (or so he said at least) so I had no one to help me put my new toys together. or play football or rugby with my new ball.  Which was just as well really as if they needed batteries my parents would never have thought to actually buy any before the big day.  And if something needed a plug?  Forget it!

And every year, without fail, one of my presents would be a home-knitted "Arran" pattern, cream sweater, scarf and hat.

The year I had a lovely drop-handlebar racing bike sticks in my mind.  My mother wouldn't let me out to ride it in on Christmas Day case it was seen as me "showing off".  We lived in the middle of nowhere so firstly no one would have seen me, and secondly aren't you meant to show off your new bike.  Not in our house evidently.

"no, you may not ride your bike", "pleeeeeeeeease", "NO!!!"

The Christmas Day I remember most of all though was one where my sister and her first husband were visiting (it must have been around 1972 or 73).  Dad was "in work" of course, and just after putting the oven on to roast the turkey it caught fire.  The oven that is, not the turkey.  My brother-in-law (Frank, an Oxford post-graduate student with commensurate levels of practical commom sense) put it out with a bowl (not a bucket of course) of water, immediately fusing the entire house.  

Santa and me (right).  Please don't laugh - I do have feelings you know!!  It looks like my mum was fattening me up in case they forgot to get a turkey!

Of course, we didn’t have a replacement fuse, so that year’s dinner was cooked in my grandmother’s flat – a 400 yard or so careful dash across some cow-pat strewn fields – on her tiny “Baby Belling” hob, and there was no sitting down to listen to the Queen, watch the afternoon film or sing along to the “Top of The Pops” Christmas Special.

And don’t talk to me about the crackers.  They were always dreadful with rubbish novelty gifts, hats that never fitted and tore in two if you tried and the corniest jokes you could imagine. If, that is, they’d remembered to get any.  Still, some things never change!

"take the plug off the washing machine"

ahhh, memories

Today though, there are no such maladies to contend with.  Everything works, and there are contingencies in place in case they don’t.  I’ve stocked up with batteries of all sizes and anything electrical now comes with a fitted plug.  There are no lethal lights - we have strings of LED ones - no radios or lamps without a plug on them, no threadbare tree wedged between breeze blocks, no fading decorations and no frying bits of turkey in lard in someone else's house.  

But do you know what?  I miss those childhood Christmases.  For all their unplanned catastrophes and “National Lampoonery” I had a whale of a time and I’d have them back in a heartbeat.

And I loved that old advent calendar.