Anyone just really fancy a Christmas from their childhood/teenhood

[ClassicStripe]

Just really craving going late night shopping when there was actual shops to go into and not everything being online. Having £20 (an actual note!) to buy my sister a present from woolworths! Walking round New Look and buying toe socks for school friends while Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses was playing in the background!
We used to have market chips and I would have brown sauce. Never a drink as that seemed like a waste of money!

No, Christmas was a Dystopian hellscape in my childhood. My parents are horrible people.

No , because they sucked.

Oh I really ache to go back to a childhood Christmas. The cosy safe feeling, the smell of the tree and the tinsel, the excitement of Christmas Eve. Even the rubbishy tv specials, the generation game and birds of a feather at Christmas!

I have a chance to try and recapture that magic for my 2 year old son but would love to experience another like the 90s! 💓

There has just been a massive thread on my local newspaper Facebook page about the Christmas grotto and sleigh ride that the Co-op used to do in the 60s and 70s. It was the most wonderful, magical thing ever, and truly felt like you were on a ride to an enchanted land. With Father Christmas at the end of it.
We all want to go back there, just for one day!
Because of course it also evoked loving memories of long-gone, much loved parents and grandparents too.

I think I miss the Christmases when DD and DSD were young more than I miss my own childhood ones.

That's very perceptive of your DD. I've had similar thoughts. I always ask my kids (teens) what they want, and they struggle to come up with anything now. It was easy when they were younger, of course!

I think that your daughter has an excellent point. @feralunderclass

My mother was from a poor but close knit family and she talks of her mother saving coupons (rationing) to buy food treats at Christmas, and everyone got a couple of presents, but I sense that there was no pressure whatsoever on my grandmother to “make Christmas perfect and magical”. That must have been nice. And because things felt like genuine treats and family and friends celebrated together, the funny thing was that it actually was “perfect and magical” for mum.

There were many things wrong with the UK in the pre-1990s era but the way Christmas was approached wasn’t one of ‘em.

No, I took the best bits from my childhood Christmases and do it here. DH didn’t get Xmas presents after about age 7. (His parents couldn’t afford it)

However, what neither of us can understand was the large buffet for Christmas tea? We have Xmas lunch at 1.30 pm, the Xmas pud about 3 pm (when we are feeling less full) and cheese, biscuits, grapes and coffee about 4 pm, which we ate all at one sitting as a child? We can’t eat a large buffet after that!

That's very perceptive of your DD. I've had similar thoughts. I always ask my kids (teens) what they want, and they struggle to come up with anything now. It was easy when they were younger, of course!

DD also struggles but that's because she's a lot more mindful and aware of money and waste. She hasn't actually outgrown the stage of wanting stuff she randomly sees but now she stops and thinks.. is it worth it, will i use it (after the initial 5 minutes after unwrapping it) etc. and she's not into big wow /expensive things like gaming,brands,makeup .As such her lists tend to be small and fairly practical. It's not because she doesn't get excited or has everything, she's just a bit more discerning now.

This exactly. No heating except the coal fire.. same presents!

No. This is what my childhood Christmas day was like:-
My Dad came in late Christmas Eve after being in the pub.
My Mother putting the presents she bought and wrapped downstairs and a stocking (pillowcase) in our rooms.
Me and my sister getting up at 4am and opening our presents.
My knackered Mother and hungover Dad coming downstairs hours later to find all presents opened and 2 bright eyed little girls playing with toys.
My Dad would prepare the veg, potatoes, sprouts and carrots and then bugger off back to the pub.
My mother would cook a turkey and the rest of the dinner.
My Dad would come home from the pub around 2pm to sit down for dinner, just the 4 of us. Just a Sunday roast with cranberry sauce being the Christmas difference. No starter, no dessert.
He would wash dishes, sit down, watch Queen's speech, fall asleep then wake up around 5pm to have cold turkey and pickles, get ready to go out to the pub until closing.
We would be in bed by 8pm because of the 4am early start and My Mother would put our toys away.

Apart from the toys, the King's Speech and my Dad not going out much now Christmas Day is exactly the same.

So no I don't want to be able to experience my childhood Christmas again and it's probably the reason why I hate Christmas now Bah! Humbug.

We had lovely Christmases when I was younger, but I wouldn’t want to go back to them. I prefer the ones we have now, with my own children. We have chosen our own traditions, and much prefer them.

I'd only want a childhood Christmas because my grandparents would be there, who died a while ago.

Yes, I wish my daughter could experience the excitement of the old late night Christmas shopping. I miss Woolues, BHS, and the old department stores when I was wee.

My mother in law has completely changed my perception of Christmas. It's genuinely festive and joyful rather than something to be got through. It's delight in receiving a thoughtful gift rather than "you shouldn't be wasting your money on me".

I'd love for my DC to have the Christmas of their childhood. Their father fucked all over us just as they got to their teens and it's all gone just like that.

As a child we were skint beyond skint, but my parents always stepped up and made it brilliant, I'm aspiring to regain that again after three years of depression.

I really miss a mooch round Debenhams

Yes and no . Yes because I'd love a big family Christmas again. But with the big family Christmas that meant chaos and bedlam and I prefer the quiet of a small Christmas

Looking back childhood Christmases were quite stressful and involved lots of bratty cousins and trying the please everyone else

I did like the buying of lots of gifts and choosing of gifts for people though

This, and the decorations that didn't have to match! Just a riot of tacky/gaudy colours and textures.
Everyone (including me) aims for a more 'designer' aesthetic now and its just not as magical as the same rag tag decorations coming out each year.
I miss the quality street tins that dad kept his bits and bobs in for years afterwards.
It mostly felt warm and cosy and like every year would be exactly the same forever, obviously it wasn't and I don't speak to the majority of my family now but the memories are nice.

I’d love to go back to the far simpler Christmases of my 70s and 80s childhood. Shopping on the high street for presents for friends and family in the 99p shop with my pocket money, decorations that were mismatched and brought down from the loft every year, the fact that the shops didn’t start stocking Christmas stuff in October, far fewer presents and less food, no stupid gimmicks like elf on the shelf and Christmas Eve boxes - it’s become completely crazy.

The big stores in town always had a grotto with a different theme each year, tableaux that you walked past. We were taken to one each year but didn’t often get the Santa gift as you had to pay for that.
Christmas Day in the house was usually very stressful, we children HAD to like, love, rave about the present parents gave us —- say you liked another gift from an aunt or uncle and 2 days of sheer hell was unleashed. As it was on me one year aged about 7. I still find Christmas stressful to this day.

I like thinking back to my childhood Christmases in the 80s / 90s but I wouldn't actually want to go back to them to be honest.
Dh had crap Christmases as a child so we've really done our best to give our dc great memories of Christmas & I think we've done OK.
We've hosted family so dc would experience this & cooked all the traditional foods & established our own traditions & have lovely traditional decorations that we've had since they were tiny.
We have late teens now & things are starting to change for us all & I think there may be a shift in how we celebrate as we go forwards. But I'm v glad to have those gorgeous 18 years of memories of their Christmases.

No. Xmas eve listening to my mum and dad arguing, yet again. The cold atmosphere on xmas day when we had to creep around as on egg-shells and then boxing day having been sent out of the house hoping to meet up with friends who told us all about their wonderful time.
Once mum finally left with her latest boy friend things became nicer but the bad memories still lingered.
Finally got to have a 'proper' xmas later on with the birth of our two sons. Death of DP put an end to all that.

I loved my childhood Christmas’s and sometimes mourn that my DC wont experience the same simple magic that I had growing up but then I remember the reason they won’t is because the life they have throughout the year is much more vibrant and full than my childhood was, and I’d 100% rather they had that than 1 day of treats, colour, and joy.