Christmas Past

Clare and her sister

Three years ago, when we cleared our family home after it had been sold, we gave away so many things I now wish I’d kept, including very expensive, brand-new Christmas decorations my mother had ordered at some point and ended up never using. They were all still in their boxes up in the loft. I think, over and above everything else I regret letting go of – not least the house itself, of course – it’s these decorations and everything they stood for that cuts the deepest. Mum’s mind was going by then and I think she had ordered them while imagining herself back in time circa the 1960s and 70s, when every year, we always had a really good Christmas with family, friends and neighbours.

My mother was very sociable and liked nothing better than filling the house with people. She was also a fabulous cook and hostess. The year my father gave her a present of a cookbook did not go down well and my mother’s icy glare matched the sudden drop in the room temperature. Christmas usually meant a full house, often with grandparents staying, and family traditions of parties, music, board games, home-made food, presents - stockings at the foot of mine and my sister’s beds, with any larger gifts arranged around the tree and I particularly recall Etch A Sketch and a Tiny Tears doll for my sister and Spirograph and Plasticraft for me, (though not necessarily all in the same year), small multi-coloured tree lights, crackers with terrible jokes and useless plastic gifts, paper hats, making paper chains, putting out the nativity set in its special place on the hallway shelf, draping tinsel and baubles everywhere, choosing the tree from a local nursery and, of course, decorating it with well-used and much-loved decorations. The seasonal chocolate shapes were my favourites and somehow mysteriously dwindled in number as the countdown to the Big Day began. We always had a chocolate advent calendar as well, and I generously allowed my sister to start it off with the first square, knowing that, this way, I’d end up with the last, and largest chocolate square of them all. I’m just surprised she fell for it every year.

I’ve never since managed to recapture that intense, almost unbearable tension, excitement and anticipation I felt as a child waiting for Christmas to begin. In fact, these days I can’t wait for it all to be over. One memorable year, when my sister and I were still quite young, we woke up at two o’clock in the morning and saw the enticingly bulging pillowcases at the foot of our beds. Santa had been! Unable to contain ourselves, we opened everything inside, then went back to bed. I still remember the terrible flat feeling when I woke up a few hours later and realised I had no surprises left. We never did that again.

The smell of a Christmas tree is so evocative and nostalgic for me. When I casually leaned in to sniff one at a country nursery a few years back, I surprised myself by promptly bursting into tears. But, although the fresh pine smell so beautifully sums Christmas for me, the daily drop and consequent vacuuming of the needles proved too much for my mother. She invented an allergy, went out and bought a silver-white fake tree and never went back to a real one. I’m probably being unkind, here, but I was always a little suspicious of her sudden allergy to pine needles. Inhaling a plastic tree didn’t really compare!

There was carol singing and the Christmas Eve service in our local church, Christmas mornings round at neighbours’ houses first of all - each year, someone would take a turn at hosting, with sherry and mince pies for the grown-ups, while we children would show off our favourite presents to each other - then the big lunch itself (always turkey), with all the trimmings, and home-made puddings (raspberry trifle for me, as I couldn’t, and still can’t, stand anything containing dried fruit), then, a few hours later, scoffing more mince pies, chocolate yule logs, heavily-iced Christmas cakes, boxes of dates and tins of salted peanuts for Dad (no one else liked them), the requisite huge tin of a certain well-known brand of chocolates, jellied fruits, chocolate oranges, After Eight mints, Turkish delight and a basket of mixed nuts, all while watching The Queen’s Speech on television, followed by Top Of The Pops, which my sister and I proudly recorded on our new shared present of a tape-recorder.

Clare and her dad

My dad’s contribution to the lunch - apart from financial, of course - was to ensconce himself in the kitchen the entire afternoon, radio on (always Radio Two), ciggies and ashtray to hand, steadily ploughing through the mountain of washing-up. It was his time to himself and, looking back, probably a necessary and very welcome respite from three fractious females.

Boxing Day often felt flat after the exciting build-up to the Big Day, with the release of nervous tensions and petty squabbles breaking out, plus the end of the holiday period and the threat of returning to school looming. I often cried when our guests left, knowing that things would be returning to ‘normal’ very soon after. Luckily my dad loved driving and we lived quite near the New Forest, so a little trip out was often on the cards. There was still plenty of delicious food left over to plough through, too, and Mum made turkey sarnies, turkey vol-au-vents, delicious turkey and vegetable soup and turkey curry, while wrestling with boiling up the enormous piece of gammon Dad always insisted on ordering, even though he was the only person in the house who really enjoyed it.

There was also the Boxing Day Meet and a tradition, for our family and friends, to gawp at the beautifully-turned-out Master Huntsman and the rest of the riders and their horses who all congregated in our town’s guildhall square in the morning - an impressive and thrilling sight for young pony-mad me, and I Ionged to be able to join them.

It’s hard to imagine now but, back then, everything ground to a halt for two days and there was no such thing as online shopping and 24/7 deliveries, so if you didn’t have enough milk, bread or loo rolls in - tough! Although, we all watched in baffled fascination as TV film crews spoke to the stalwart men and women who were prepared to queue throughout Christmas, and often bitingly cold snowy weather, outside Harrods or Selfridges for their famous Boxing Day sales and a half-price fur coat or colour television (something not all of us had). For me, no purchase was worth enduring such hardships, or missing out on all the Christmas Day food and excitement!

Clare and a real Xmas tree

On Christmas Day morning one year, after imbibing a touch too much sherry along with the mince pies at a neighbour’s house, my mother and her friend  linked arms,  then sang and wove their merry way down the middle of our road - to my utmost mortification and embarrassment as I reluctantly trailed behind them. Grown-ups were supposed to behave themselves and set an example, weren’t they?!

A short while later, the friend’s very cross husband came marching over to complain petulantly that he couldn’t get his wife inside to cook their lunch, as she was riding their son’s expensive Christmas present bike round and round the Close, with seemingly no intention of dismounting any time soon. He might have been implying my mother had led her astray, but I think it more likely he was expecting some sympathy from her; possibly, even, the offer to share our lunch. I wish I could remember her response - I do hope it was something pithy and sharp - but I can clearly remember looking at him as he peered through our Venetian blinds at his errant wife and wondering why he couldn’t just get on with cooking the damn meal himself?!

As with the neighbourhood tradition of taking it in turns to host Christmas Day morning get-togethers, so it was on New Year’s Eve. If the grown-ups weren’t all being bussed to nearby Southampton’s Top Rank Suite or, a little further afield, to one of Bournemouth’s grand hotels for a wild (probably) drunken evening of dinner and dancing, dressed in the trends of the time: large-print midi skirts and frilly blouses, long pinafores or maxi dresses for the women, and pastel-coloured wide-lapelled suits for the men - they took it in turns to host a NYE party at home. When it was our turn, it was impossible to sleep, so my sister and I would play ‘hostesses’ in our nighties and dressing-gowns, pinching some of the delicious food along the way. There was much scuffling and giggling one year, when a neighbour took off his shirt and my mother wrote in lipstick on his chest: Where’s my shirt?!

On another occasion, my mother, dying to show off a new move she’d learned in her weekly yoga class, stood on her head in our kitchen, legs braced against the wall, and waited for someone to come in. And waited…and waited… Eventually, there were murmurs from the living room of: ‘Where’s June?' ‘I haven’t seen her for ages.’ ‘Is she alright?’ Finally, they began to crowd into the kitchen. ‘About time!’ my by-then puce-faced mother shrieked. ‘I’ve been waiting for someone to notice me!’ Crumpling to the mustard-yellow tiled floor in her lime-green trouser suit, she was probably relieved she’d chosen to wear that over her maxi-skirt. At least her modesty was preserved - if not her pride.

One of those family Xmases

Then there was the year a neighbour stuffed cotton wool into his ears when it came to singing Auld Lang Syne at midnight. He said it always made him cry.

In the last year that we owned our house, it stood, empty and unlit, over Christmas and the New Year. This was thanks to Covid restrictions - although, with hindsight, it really wouldn’t have mattered for just the two of us to be there one last time. It breaks my heart to think that, in all its history, that was the one and only time this happened. How I wish it could have been different. Other people are living there now, and no doubt they are making their own traditions. I really hope the little house is shining brightly once more, and will soon be ringing with the sounds of people having a fabulous festive feast and plenty of fun and frolics. And all beautifully decorated, of course.