If you remember these at Christmas you were a child in the 70s

[BreakfastAtMilliways]

Testing the lights on December 23rd, then having to try out every one on the string to find out which one had blown…

Frantically trying to find a shop that sold spare Christmas tree lightbulbs at 3.25pm on Christmas Eve…

Lugging the tree out to the garden on January 6th, and spending the next 2 weeks hoping it wouldn’t die…

Driving (or rather being driven) into London to see the lights on Oxford Street…

Walking home from school after the carol concert and peeking through the front windows of each house on your road to see if you could spot their Christmas tree…

Arranging all the cards from your schoolmates around your bedroom…

Any more?

Magnetic letters for the fridge were a present one year. One Christmas morning, my dad used to them to write "Joyeux Noel" (French for Happy Christmas).

I didn't have Lego, I had Betta Bilda which was great for making houses, stables etc. I still have it, up in the loft somewhere.

We had Betta Bilda too! I much preferred it-the pieces were a lot smaller than Lego.

Never heard of Berta Bilda. I did have quite a remote childhood tho...

You didn't have the Britains Floral Garden set as well, did you?

Yes! Ihad the grrenhouse, paving and pond. My sister had the little hose reel.

January sales not starting until 2 January.

We weren’t allowed to watch TV on Christmas Day.

Veg kept warm in the hostess trolley.

Didn't Boxing Day sales exist then or were they slightly later?

Yes going to spend Christmas money in The Sales, which only happened once a year..

Nothing was open on Boxing Day.

See, people say this about the January sales every year but I was watching a load of 70s Christmas adverts on YouTube the other day and all the sales were advertised as starting on the 27th.

They definitely weren’t round our way. Do you have exact dates for the ads?

Only by virtue of what they were advertising. They were late 70s. Some of them had dates for the holiday brochures, like ‘summer 79’, so I’m guessing they were Christmas 78. The seemed to be the Essex region as the ads for the sofa companies etc were Romford, Colchester and the like.

Is it that they started on Boxing Day in places like Oxford Street but later in other places?

Or maybe if you were like us, you wouldn't dream (couldn't?) catch a bus into any town or city until Jan 2nd, and had no idea what was going on outside our village in the meantime?