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?

I’ve just found mine on YouTube! It was a SallyHappyTalk doll. She also ‘walked’, but not really. If you moved her arms, her legs would move too.

I don’t know why I thought her name was Jane.

@MichelleBxx it was a pantograph. I had one. Fiddly, but worked!
I loved my SpearsToys weaving loom and used it lots to weave odd bits of wool. Would stitch it onto a fabric backing and make it up into a little purse. Feels like I made hundreds of them! It was a great toy that got me into making things.
Also used to have a lot of board games - Cluedo, Ulcers (a business game), draughts, coppit, sorry, and always wanted a 'pop-o-matic' game with the dice enclosed on a dome in the centre of the board which you would press to 'pop' and toss the dice. We did the same old jigsaws over and over again.
My cousin got Pong - the first not-quite computer game - a simple form of tennis that played on the telly. Very low tech compared with these days!
Anyone else make a readicut rug? I had a great little one of a cat in a hat by the side of my bed - made by me.Always wanted the plaster of paris mould kits to make statues. DDad had a candle making kit. He also used to make ginger beer.

This is the talking doll I had!

m.youtube.com/watch?v=4VNZbHvPyFo

TooFamnHot yes, they were Clakers.

Here they are, bloody lethal. Imagine them being allowed in playgrounds today 😂

m.youtube.com/watch?v=FLHftISLNHE

Making jewellery with the non plasticated coloured tin foil that covered sweets. Dates, satsumas,chucking nutshells into the real fire and missing. Selection boxes. No one liked the spangles.
A cinzano or port and lemon for us children
Lametta decorations which we'd throw at the tree for the finishing touches

Brilliant post OP

Driving into London to see the Oxford Street lights. Dropping in on my parents' best friends on Christmas Eve and getting a Rupert annual and something like a big set of felt tips with fancy colours I'd never had before. I used to love the low lighting and the Christmas tree with its fairy lights. Then on to my grandparents for the traditional Wigilia (Polish Christmas Eve dinner).

It was a black tie affair and I would be wearing a long party dress. I still have one from Laura Ashley in a purple and lilac print. The highlight of the evening was present opening after dinner. I might get a tapestry set (I was crafts mad) or a book (one of the Narnia chronicles) or some item of clothing like a pretty nightie from my gran. Then we would drive back (drink driving wasn't such a taboo then) in time for Midnight Mass.

Next morning I'd wake up to see what Father Christmas (not Santa) had left on my bed. It would be the 'wow' presents that were a bit too tacky for Babcia and Dziadzius. Sindy doll with several sets of clothes and, if I was lucky, an item or two of furniture. Topic bar and pack of Jelly Tots. Fancy socks. And maybe a few bits of stationery and art materials. My brothers would always pop into my room to see what I'd got.

We did of course have Christmas Day dinner at my grandparents as well. I remember cracking the whole nuts and the impossible challenge of separating the brazil nuts from their shells. And the smell of my dad's cigar after dinner. Even now the faint whiff of a cigar takes me back to those days.

How I love my sets of carriage lights. The modern coloured lights don't have enough pink and yellow in my opinion.

Your post on Carriage Lights reminded me of the After Eights carriage thing.

Does anyone remember them...a gold carriage shaped holder to put your box of After Eights in?

Very fancy.

Did anyone else have a motorised potters wheel? It didn’t go fast enough to actually make anything, so I made models out of the clay instead. They’d take weeks to dry, then cracks would appear in them and ruin them .

Also, a tiny plastic oven with a light in it. I thought it actually worked, but I’m pretty sure now that it wouldn’t have. My mum helped me make a cheesecake base in it- which now I know didn’t actually require baking .

I remember the cooker with the light but I didn't have one I had a thing that spun round and you squirted paint in to make Pollock-like works of art, I can't remember what it was called but I bought something similar for DD years later

I had a Potters Wheel, Shockers! It was shite, wasn't it?

DH just bought our DC a Guinness Book of Records as a present. That's another great 70s memory of mine... DB or I would get one every year!

I recall on New Years Eve leaving a slipper behind the front door and when I got up on New Years Day it had been filled with a satsuma, nuts and a box of chocolate animals like the ones in the image. I have no idea what that tradition was and no-one else seems to have heard of it.

I was born a bit late to remember proper 1970s Christmases, but a lot of my memories of early 80s ones match - those carriage lights (I had no idea they were so ubiquitous. I loved them. I could stare at the tree for hours), concertina streamer paper decorations and a paper lantern in the middle of the ceiling, pillowcases for presents, a Tiny Tears in a synthetic babydoll nightie.

Lindt chocolate animals mmmm

Lindt chocolate animals were the best!

Mmmm, nothing tastier than a Lindt chocolate kitten. Loved those.

Head first 🍫

Cadburys chocolate fingers in a tin.

Clementines that were actually seedless, juicy and sweet as opposed to the dry weird seed filled crap I've ended up with from various supermarkets in recent years.

Proper fairy lights with soft colours (my fave magenta pink doesn't even exist in shitty LED ones, not that I've seen anyway).

Tinsel tree with tinsel and real multicoloured glass baubles (I've still got a tiny fragment of a shattered one in my wrist, am looking at it now).

Folding foil stars etc. Paper chains I made from coloured writing pads and gloy (?) glue gum, then lick em n stick em ones from the post office, then foil stretchy ones.

Making mince pies using Robertsons jars of mincemeat, for some reason I was outrageously good at making shortcrust pastry as a child.

Mum selling my good toys from last year to pay towards this year's. She made me an expert in nicely cleaning up second hand stuff (I also learned very quickly to slightly damage anything I wanted to keep).

I buy tangerines cos they are more retro and are juicier. Whatever happened to satsumas you don’t seem to get them, and French Golden delicious applies were the best at Christmas.

A selection box that lasted a week, and was the most chocolate we’d see at one time.
A glass of port and lemonaide.
Ed Stewart (on TV or actually probably the Radio) visiting kids in hospital.

I used to get a bar of soap shaped like an animal, a flannel and a new toothbrush.

Shockers - my sister had that cool (and probably still,has it!). Can’t believe anyone else remembers it!

I have fond memeories of 8070s christmases, and climbing on the back,of sofas precariously to pin streamers to the ceilings. The more the merrier. They got reused every year (and are probably still in my parents lofts).

I hate the minimalist Christmas decorations we have today. A lot,of places only have a tree. Bah humbug,

I was a Tiny Tears girl.

Fuck me, a lot of this is ringing bells...I'm older than I thought!

My mum made us a stocking each year out of red crepe paper - she machined round them with her sewing machine and wrote our names on in glue then sprinkled glitter on. They always fell apart within a couple of days, sadly, but she did it every year!

We has a tinsel Christmas tree which one year we added 'angel hair' to - horrible wispy stuff that probably caused asthma if you inhaled it, but we thought it was v sophisticated - I think it was the only time in my childhood we bought anything new for the tree. Testing all the Christmas tree lights and replacing blown bulbs was an annual event.

My mum kept all the Christmas decorations in an ancient Peak Freans cheese biscuits tin, probably dating from the 50s. I remember us all watching the Morecambe & Wise show on Christmas Day with the fire on. Playing cards with my Granny - 'Newmarket' was reserved for Christmas and we used matches to bet with.

Getting a Pocketeers (anyone remember them??) fruit machine in my stocking - it was my Christmas highlight that year!!