Christmas

Christmas is coming

the geese are getting fat

please put a penny in the old man's hat.

If you haven't got a penny a ha'penny will do.

If you haven't got a ha'penny, then God bless you.

Well, you know, I have come to the conclusion that you have to sit and think for quite a while before your mind can take you back to Christmas in the 1950s. I suppose this is because Christmas is one of the great constants for most of us, so it is hard to disentangle what Christmas was like at different times. But the emails I have had in have certainly helped, and one thing, for many of us, is that we were not as well off then as we are now.

The curious thing about looking back is that I don't remember the time as unmitigated pleasure. No wonder they say that Christmas is one of the major times of tension in the year - but that said, I had fun, and I am going to start with the run up to Christmas. And I will hand you over to Mary who lives in Oxford for her memory of the weather at that time of year in Lanarkshire.

"Of course we had no central heating, and in fact no heating at all in the bedroom unless we were ill in bed, when a coal fire might be lit or a stinky paraffin heater brought in. But it was fun scraping the ice crystals off the inside of the window with your fingernail and scarring out patterns - much less pretty than the ones that nature produced. You usually had a pig in your bed, a porcelain boat shaped bottle, which had to be removed before you got into bed in case you kicked it out on to the floor and broke it. And we all wore semmits and hand-knitted vests and pawkies - which my spell-checker wants to make pokies. We were told in the Girl Guides that if your clothing was really inadequate to keep you warm you could help by wearing sheets of brown paper inside as extra insulation. We thought that was so weird we never did. Don't stick your feet too close to the fire to warm them up, or against the hot water bottle in bed, or you will get chilblains; and we sometimes did. Must take a spoonful of cod liver oil every morning (uggh!!) to ward off colds; it didn't.Winter smogs in Glasgow, when you could not see across the road and struggled along from lamppost to lamppost; then suddenly a bus or car would loom up out of the gloom right beside you, with its headlights full on and the driver hardly able to see the road ahead. You would be tasting the gritty smog and grinding it in your teeth while your nose choked up with soot and the smuts settled all over your face."

Well, Mary, we were not all huddling in to the fire and eating our porridge (I can remember that on very cold days mum would put a hard chair, with our plates of porridge steaming away on top of it, up in front of the fire and Irene and I would kneel on either side of it to have our breakfast). Life was a bit different for Margaret in Dunedin. She writes

 "December has one very special memory for me when with a couple of friends we would sit at our front door and sing Christmas carols to all passers by - remember this would be in lovely summer sunshine! It was normally reasonably lucrative!!"

The School Play: 

Were you an angel?  a shepherd? a wise man? a villager? What, you were Mary? or Joseph? or the Angel Gabriel? I am sad to report that I was none of these. I was in the back row of the choir - and part of the reason I was in the back row was that my school shoes were brown and the members of the choir were meant to have black shoes! Never mind, the carols were good. I particularly liked the Rocking Carol - although any poor baby would have been violently seasick with the way we rocked our arms.

The School Party: 

Compared with the works parties that you might be lucky to go to, the school party was a bit of a restrained affair. The one I remember best was further up the primary school. My cousin had got married that summer and I had  a stunner of a dress for the wedding - white with dark blue velvet spots. This was the dress (there was no other) that I would be wearing to the school party. It was carefully put in a cardboard flower box and we set off to the bus stop to get to school. The rain was pouring down - veritably stoatin' doon. And if you remember, the trench coats we had were not quite waterproof, to put it mildly. We sat in the classroom through the morning in our wet, but steaming clothes, and then it was time to get changed for the party - and my best friend Mary, believe it or not, took out from her bag almost the same dress! 

Various girls played the piano or sang - we did neither, but I am sure we were the best at the polka dance:

Wind it this way

Wind it that way

Pull Pull Clap, clap, clap.

Wind it this way

Wind it that way

Pull Pull Clap, clap, clap.

Now that all our work is done we shall go and have some fun.

Now that all our work is done we shall go and have some fun.

My uncle Harry worked in a dye works in Paisley. Those were the days when the mills were big employers and there were around seven dyeworks in Paisley. Now his works Christmas party for children was a nothing spared attempt at giving children a good time. The food (the jelly), the games (pass the parcel, musical chairs, old Macdonald, and

In and out the dusty bluebells

In and out the dusty bluebells

In and out the dusty bluebells

I am your master

Tipper ipper apper on your shoulders

Tipper ipper apper on your shoulders

Tipper ipper apper on your shoulders

I am your master.

was one of my favourites.

The party always ended with a Laurel and Hardy film or Keystone Cops, or Charlie Chaplin, and then there was Santa and a present.

Visiting Santa

That of course was not the only time you were likely to see Santa. In Argyle Street in Glasgow there was a huge department store called Lewis's (not John Lewis). And Santa had his grotto at the top of the building. We lined up all the way up the staircase for the big treat.

And so we rolled on to the big day, getting the house decorated. Do you remember the paper chains - great fun but often the gum wouldn't stick or you would end up with umpteen strips of the same colour, even though you had tried your best to mix them properly. We had other paper decorations made of brightly coloured tissue paper that accordioned out and were stretched over the room from the central light to each of the corners. Things seem to have pretty much the same around the globe as Margaret says that in Dunedin:

"Of course always fun to make our decorations (Chinese lanterns and crepe paper streamers etc) and hang them around the house as well as the shrubs in the gardens."

Margaret from Edinburgh wrote:

"Things I remember about Christmas in the fifties:being delighted with little things in the Christmas stocking, things like the Satsuma ( although we probably didn't call it that)decorating a house plant one Christmas instead of a tree (presumably because we couldn't afford one)"

I don't remember any christmas cake or black bun or home made shortbread, or indeed mince pies, despite our mum being a good baker. But we did have sultana cake.

Funnily enough, I can't have been alone in having no experience of mince pies, for Janet says 

"In the late forties a new family moved into our street. A week before Christmas the lady of the house told us she would be baking mince pies and asked us round on Christmas Eve for a mince pie. I looked forward all week to a lovely mince pie. Imagine my horror when I bit into it and found it contained fruit not meat ! After my protests we hurriedly left !"

My friend Mary from Oxford though was into the mince pies even then as she remembers 

"Carol singing around the neighbours, collecting for charity and being given mince pies and biscuits." 

My dad worked in the shipyards, and they did not have a day off on Christmas day until well into the 1950s.

Before I started school, my mum opened a fruit and veg shop. Christmas was one of the busiest times of the year, only beaten by Hogmonay. So it was pretty late on Christmas eve before the shop was closed.

Then, on the morning itself, there were the two pillowcases, one for Irene and one for me. Santa had been. 

And here are some memories of Christmas morning. First from Margaret in Dunedin:

"Our Christmas stockings (one of Mother's old lisle ones) would hang at the end of our beds, and on Christmas morning would have lots of treasures - an orange ,an apple, banana, new toothbrush, candy bar, knickers, singlets, socks, balloons, a small bag of sweets and usually a board/card game of some description (Snakes & Ladders, Ludo, Old Maid, Donkey). Of course there was always a gift from "mum & Dad" received later in the morning, cos we normally woke about 5am for our stockings, then often went back to sleep." 

Irene believes that one of the best presents that she got was a John Bull printing set. She spent hours with the fiddly little letters (made of black rubbery moulds) writing stories and letters to imaginary people. I loved those games, I don't know if you remember, where there was a Toucan with a magnet under it and two large circles, one with questions the other with the answers. You pointed the Toucan to a question on the sheet, guessed the answer, and the Toucan would tell you if you were right or wrong. And, of course, I loved the chocolate selection boxes and the satsuma.

And finally, that dinner. I suspect they maybe did better than we did in New Zealand, for Margaret recalls:

"Although high summer here in NZ, we still have a traditional Christmas dinner with Turkey and all the trimmings, and this year will be no different! I always remember Mother putting the turkey in the oven, then the family would all go to church, and on our return, the smell was wonderful as we opened the door .Of course we have "new"  potatoes (cooked with mint) and "fresh" peas (always the "male" job to pod the peas!)"

The funniest Christmas must have been that of Margaret from Edinburgh. She still remembers:

"being scared out of my wits when the chicken which mum got for the Christmas dinner decided to stand up in the middle of the room. Fresh chicken! Luckily it didn't have enough life in it to run so it did end up cooked and enjoyed." 

Being entirely caught up with memories of being asked to eat brussel sprouts (asked was putting it mildly), I have little memory of the main meal. Irene tells me it was usually chicken but since everything was fresh in those days and there might not be a decent one left by the time mum got there she might instead have a steak pie. Oh, says I, I only remember that at New Year. "Well Aunt Alice did not have a monopoly on dishing up steak pie" says Irene, - and on that note I will leave you for just now.

Later in the fifties we went to Aunt Dora's for the meal on Christmas night. She had an odd selection of family and friends, and I always remember the meal finishing with jelly, tinned fruit and evaporated milk. The most controversial bit of the day was always raised over the Queen's Christmas message. Some tolerated it, others were republicans and were appalled at having to support the royal family. Tout ca change, tout c'est la meme chose. And do you remember Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn Christmas after Christmas on African Queen?

There is still plenty time to send in some of your memories. so hope you will tear yourself away from Christmas cleaning, shopping, cooking and wrapping presents and give some time to the 50s.