I'm dreaming of a 1970s Xmas

[brizzledrizzle]

A single hazelnut in the bottom of my stocking, chocolate coins,
lovely paisley/flowery ankle length dress to wear on the day,
putting up the tree with glass (!) decorations.

No Whamageddon!

How did you have xmas in the 1970s?

Oh my goodness - memories of my floral floor length party dress made by my Nan!

Proper selection boxes, death trap Christmas tree lights, Tippee Tumbles, snowballs with glacé cherries, pickled onions and silver skin onions seeming like the height of sophistication, Sindy clothes, Newberry Fruits, Brut, Faberge gift sets, the Condor man, I could go on for days!

All the alcohol on the sideboard to include every spirit possible, babycham, a party 7 and a soda siphon.

Everyone smoked so there’d be a standing ashtray and a table lighter made of marble which looked very posh.
The Woolworths advert was a real production with big stars appearing in it. We had the Morcambe and Wise special to watch and our selection boxes were stocking shaped and covered in netting, I loved Treets best

Learning to play my new Stylophone and listening to Showaddywaddy's Greatest hits album.

Always a pair of dress-up plastic slip on shoes in my stocking, usually the heels had broken by tea time.
A satsuma and an annual like Bunty.

My best 70's presents were a Girls World, a Tressy doll and a Tiny Tears.

Top of The Pops Christmas special with my much older sister dancing around the living room with me.

We still use glass baubles. Newbery Fruits, some little liquer chocs shaped like cigars. Pomagne. Morecambe and Wise on the TV.

Oh and my mum playing her Christmas LP without fail as she prepared dinner..".I Saw a Ship Come Sailing In" reminds me so much of those childhood christmas times.

Hello my people!

Both sets of Grandparents had white trees made of tinsel-y stuff, with coloured lights on. Ours was always a real tree. We would take it in turns to stay with Grandparents, or have them stay with us. My parents would play bridge with my paternal grandparents, whilst drinking G&Ts on Christmas Eve. I used to listen to them through the wall (bungalow) and work myself up until I was sick because I was so excited. ‘Father Christmas’ would tape a note to the sitting room wall, expressly forbidding entry until 5am .

My floral dress was a ditsy print in brown, with cream lace surrounding a square yoke. The sleeves were puffed at the wrists, and the neck was an Edwardian style.

I remember getting a slinky, a papermate pen in a holder shaped like a dome- headed creature with a spring for a middle, and some wooden stilts made by my dad and painted with red gloss paint.

My favourite song was Wombling Merry Christmas.

And I loved the smell of liqueur chocolates.

Newberry fruits! Yes, and the satsuma.

Did anybody get a game called Ricochet? It was an orange plastic case with transparen plastic over the front, you used a magnetic gun to pick up ball bearings and shoot at targets.

And dont forget the Blue Peter Christmas crown made with coathangers covered with fireproof tinsel and four candles attached to it!!

I’ve got a box of liqueurs that someone gave me. OH will probably eat them all. Remember how before sell by dates chocolate with white mottling was a thing?

No one has mentioned Ronco and K-Tel yet, the record selector, hand held battery operated sewing machine and the thing that made drinking glasses out of bottles. The bottle thing always seemed hazardous.

Snowballs made with advocaat, remember the ad?! Dates in a box.

We have fond memories of the hamper being delivered from the milkman (paid off weekly through the year), we were allowed to unpack it to have a look (marvelling at such delights as the Fray Bentos pie that was normally eaten sometime in January and the tin of potatoes that made their way to the harvest festival in September) but then had to pack it up again.... We could never get everything back in, it was like 3D tetris

Dad would always buy mum a huge box (single layer) of Black Magic chocs with a big picture on the top (I've googled, but I can't find an example) and I got to have a snowball every year, and sherry trifle.

We watched the xmas telly on our TV from Radio Rentals (Wooden surround) and Mum and Dad would make up get up to change the channel. Luckily there was only 3 so it didn't happen that often

Omg this is where I should be. Born in 1967.

My dad iced cakes so we had a professional Christmas cake and the angels that went on them were beautuful. Afterwards we added strings and put them on the tree, still with that little bit of hard icing underneath. We still have these angels.

My mate had a huge family and used to buy them all Quality Street in tins. I remember them having piles of them. Like 20 tins. Never got to eat them though as they were for presents.

Walking around town delivering christmas cards.

York jellies at my nans. Didnt eat them but they were always there.

Putting the real fire on and moving into the lounge for Christmas day. Both sets of grandparents had guest houses so their posh lounge was out of bounds most of the year.

At one grandparents we had to use the guest toilets which were upstairs in a building that had been closed since end of summer. It was dark and cold and scary.

Soda siphons at my aunts who had a very swish bar in her upstairs lounge. Hiding her cigarettes because they were bad for her. Getting into big trouble.

Spending time one year with my cousin who was really ill with flu. Turned out she had leukeamia and later died. :( she will be forever of that era of christmasses.

I loved my Plasticraft and a bit later on I remember being so excited to get Goodbye Yellowbrick Road. A record was always a great gift

Stripy socks with individual toes

Symphony of Shadows:

More please.....I'll listen for days and days too

Yep - silver skin onions the height of sophistication. I remember (can we set these as new words to the tune of the Clive Dunn song, 'Grandad') Other similarly appropriate word contributions welcome.

That's just me laughing at myself for remembering 1970's Christmas.

Whisky Mac Dad....(said my Mum at some point on Christmas Day to my Grandad. Both dead now.)

Yep, Advocaat, glove box dates, jar of Quality Street. The jar kept for the following year's home made pickled onions. I really miss my Nana's home made pickled onions. Or, failing that, my mums. Mine were just never the same.

Orange and lemon jellies arranged in a circular pattern in a fancy box that no one really wanted or liked but they used to turn up 'on the sideboard' with the rest of the chocolates/nuts/satsumas etc.

What about the 1970s Xmas decorations? Every ceiling in every room decorated in pastel coloured paper chains made by me and my sister hung across the ceiling and then metallic coloured lanterns hung all over the ceiling with drawing pins. Also tinsel hung everywhere!

Pubs packed with people having a good time with their mates. Not worrying about the alcohol consumption. That special atmosphere of beer, smoke and bonhomie.
Pubs will never be like that again.

A compendium of games - board games made of cardboard. A Blue Peter annual. Actually I'm thinking of the 60s there I was 15 in 1970 and beyond all that.

I was still making that coat hanger advent calendar in infant assembly until I retired four years ago although I didn't light the candles. They were sooooo impressed!

'A snowball for the kids' made by my Uncle Jim. Eight years old and I couldn't feel my face by 12 noon.

Eat Me dates. Nobody ever did.

Slade on Top of the Pops. Noel Edmonds from the BT tower on Christmas morning.

The smell when you took the lid off the Quality Street tin, and the jewel-coloured squeaky wrappers.

Children's films on at all mad hours of the day. The joy of switching the telly on at 10am at some point between Christmas and New Year, and finding Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or Digby the Biggest Dog in the World.

Cream Soda and Cherryade from the pop man.

Going with dad to 'buy the drink'.

Helping ice the Christmas cake by making royal icing peaks with the flat of a knife.

Have I got to be the one that points out that Christmas started pretty much the weekend before at the earliest and went through to the whole 12 nights. Most parties were held in the actual Christmas period, not before Christmas day.

Shops were decorated in an explosion of tinsel and trees and streamers, not the discreet 'tasteful' cardboard themes that change every year.

loved my 1970s xmas

Hand knitted jumper from mum and maybe an aunt if I was lucky Used to just about have a whole new outfit for the day

Round to my Grannys on xmas day much to my mums disgust but we loved it Advocaat on the side and whisky Mac for my grandad

Roaring log fire when we got home as we lived on a farm and change out of new clothes into old to feed the animals

I got a torch with a flashing light on that was amazing at 7 years old

putting decorations up was an episode in threadbare tinsel and glass baubles

One year i think was 77 we had our normal school holidays and then went back and it really snowed so we ended up with another couple of weeks off
Dad made us a big sledge that we towed behind my pony

Halcyon days

I was born in 1970 so had 10 1970's christmasses and I really can't remember many of them in any great detail.....

My stronger memories are of 80's christmasses when I was between 10-20yrs.

That makes me a bit sad tbh.

I do remember me and my 5 or 6 cousins all piling into my grandparents good front room and it was the only time of the year we were allowed in there. The fire would be lighting and that room had a special waxy / polishy smell.

My cousin got stretch-arm-strong one year and we all had fun doing tug of war with it.

My grandparents had wonderful old fashioned decorations, big coloured foil stars and circles hanging from the ceiling and lots of tinsel and coloured lights on their tiny artificial tree.

In those years we never spent christmas in our own house, always in my grandparents.

I remember selection boxes that were sock shaped with netting and full sized bars of chocolate in them

I was born in 1972 so the 70s were the peak Christmas excitement years for me.

My mum, our cat and me used to decamp to my grandparents for a few days at Christmas. Which in retrospect didn’t make much sense as we lived less than a mile away from them, but being away from home added to the atmosphere for me.

My grandparents used to get hundreds of Christmas cards and they’d be put up in every available space. My grandma used to save them all and in the run up to Christmas I’d use pinking shears, a hole punch and ribbon to make gift tags for her from last years cards.

The house would be full of strange food you only ever saw at Christmas. Eat Me dates, Newberry Fruits, which I hated then but quite like now, cheesy footballs, big long proper twiglets always served in a tall Tupperware cup, those orange and lemon slices, nuts in shells, Ye Olde Oak tinned ham. One year the cat got into the kitchen and licked all the jelly off the outside of the ham, my grandma washed the ham under the tap and served it up!

Presents would be opened after church on Christmas Day. I usually got an annual, either Blue Peter or Brownies or Muppet Show, a cuddly toy, something for my Sindys (one year a car, another it was a bedroom set) and something to play outside with. One of my favourite ever presents was a Kermit the frog shaped space hopper.

My grandad always got Old Spice aftershave, cream line toffees and John Player Special cigarettes! I remember one year we got him a special Christmas set of a large round box of cigarettes with a smaller but identical box of matches attached to it. I thought it was a brilliant present.

My mum and grandma always had toiletries from Avon, often. soaps in novelty shapes. My mum once got a set which comprised of white heart shaped soaps which opened up to reveal smaller red heart shaped soap inside. They were the most sophisticated thing I’d ever seen. I really miss the weird and wonderful variety of things Avon used to sell. My mum also always got a Tobelerone and my grandma got a box of chocolates. My grandma’s chocolates were a variety which came in a box which was like a jewellery box, with a lid that opened and a drawer underneath. I can’t remember what they were called, I wasn’t allowed one (much to my consternation) because they were her special chocolates, but she used to give me the box when she’d finished them.