A fun thread, what are your Christmas as memories of childhood? Do you have traditions every year?
As a child we always lived in homes that Dad designed and built one of his things was a very large inglenook fireplace, you could sit in the nook and our stockings would be hung inside. He also used to drive Mum & I up to London going down Oxford Street, past Liberty’s onto Sloane Square to see the lights, it was magical.
Always about 3 weeks before we would go to Liberty’s shopping, Fortnum and Masons for some goodies, Hamleys for toy’s, load the car and drive to Harrod’s where the displays were out of this world. This was a time when little traffic in London back in the 60’s.
Christmas Morning up to Boxhill for dog walking or sledding if snow, back for hot chocolate and marshmallows, huddling by the arga.
Boxing Day would always be a trip to Worthing for a bracing walk along the front, flipping freezing but Dad always said the air would do us good, not sure about that!
I grew up with parents who loved Christmas and am sure that is why I still do all the decorations bit although just the 2 of us, plus dawgie who has his own named stocking, lol.
Christmas Day was my Dad’s birthday. He was so difficult to buy even for without that. My sister and i usually bought him two pairs of socks and presented them as odd pairs. The year he died we had to have Christmas on Boxing Day as it just didn’t seem right.
Christmas stocking with a satsuma in the toe. Husband and I are both in our fifties and the only thing we do giftwise is a stocking for each other, with wee presents, and yes, there’s still a satsuma in the toe. Everything else is flexible but that stocking is the highlight.
My memories of Christmas as children were my brother and I jumping on Mum & Dad’s bed with our stockings (which were actually used by Dad in his wellies for the rest of the year!) with our satsumas in the toe! Then for breakfast Mum always boiled a ham and Dad used to read the section from ‘The Wind in the Willows’ where Mole & Rat find the Mole’s home in snow and the mice come around carol singing. He always did really good voices and I loved listening to him read to us.
Now our traditions are the stockings in our bed with little man & watching ‘The Mumpet Christmas Carol’ whilst opening presents - I think hubby and I know the film off by heart now!
Loving hearing everyone else’s Christmas memories and traditions.
Christmas Day is also my birthday, so it always began with my father getting up and loudly saying ‘Happy Birthmas’ in order to remind everybody. I got the same number of presents as my three siblings, but maybe bigger, or a bit more expensive. We all got a stocking with a tangerine and a few nuts in the toe and a cracker at the top. We’re in our seventies, so a tangerine was a real treat, and our present from our parents was usually a new coat. I remember one year getting a beautiful coat my mother had made from my father’s old Fire Service jacket, with a little grey velvet to trim the collar.
My other weird memory of Christmas is that my mother, although a non-smoker, used to smoke a cigar on Christmas morning to make the house small like Christmas.
There are lots of lovely family traditions I like to think of… however the reality is the that our family Christmas also always involves an element of bad tempered exasperation and counting the hours / days until things can go back to normal - having said that I’ll probably even miss that this year
While we are on the subject of Cake… Our Christmas cake, lovingly made by my mum and with thick almond paste (Yummy) was also my Dad’s birthday cake.
I could just eat a slice of that now.
PS: When I was at university she used to send me back after the holidays with a big rich fruit cake with a layer of almond paste in the middle…
I have to say it was not terribly thoughtful of your parents to give you that date as a birthday. Now I was determined not to do the same for my own children after my Dad’s (oh and granddad was Boxing Day) but got it wrong (stopped taking my pill while I had my appendix out and nature took its course ) and my eldest daughter’s birthday is 16th December.
Was determined to choose a better date for my second… not at Chirstmas ok but… right in the middle of the school holidays so she could never have all her friends for parties, 28th July… again not my fault… nobody told me I could get pregnant with a coil fitted and then she was 3 weeks early… she was just very keen to join the family…
I certainly refused. My parents can scarcely take the blame. I was just impatient. I arrived two months early - but apparently I did wait until after the party. I also received a blue blanket, because they had run out of pink ones! And there are decided advantages to being born during the school holidays - no ‘bumps’ or hair-pulling! (Less pleasant traditions than most Christmas ones.)
My nan knitted Christmas stockings for my brother and myself to hang up, they had the tendency to do the same as the wet knitted swimsuit and grow every year.
I think my favourite Christmas memory is of my eldest son who at the age of 2 decided that a Christmas tree is for climbing, I forget how many times we hauled him out of the tree then stood it back up and rearranged the decorations, after the umpteenth time OH nailed it to the ceiling, it worked no more knocked over tree.
