Does anyone else think about your childhood and teen years at this time of year?

[Lifejustpassesyouby]

Must be the build up to Christmas. Been thinking about it a lot recently. 80’s Christmas as a kid and 90’s as a teen.

Great times

Anyone else

Yes, I get really nostalgic for an 80s Christmas at my Grandma's house.

I also loved going and picking a Christmas tree on the 17th Dec every year and then going home and decorating it.

I'm 24 and thinking about the good times in 6th form a lot. I actually miss the people I went to school with.

Nightmare

Yes. I very much do.

Within the last 4 years I have lost both my parents, and my Auntie is now in a home suffering from dementia. My family is getting smaller and smaller and it makes me think back to a time when we would have big family Christmasses. Grandparents, parents, me and my brother, my aunties, uncles and cousins, all sat round one massive table. The table was always mismatched as we never had one big table that would fit us all. One year we even had a wallpapering table set up with a table cloth on! 😂None of the chairs matched and all were different heights. It was mental but amazing. Then we would do present swapping and then play games all evening. It was the highlight of my year and lasted from being a kid, well into my late teens.

As the years went by and we lost my grandparents, the family dispersed, some staying put, but many moving away, and to different areas (me included) so we never really got together again as a big unit.

But I loved those Christmas Days with us all together and think of them fondly.

Yeah definitely this year. My granny died last month and we used to spend all our christmases at hers as kids so I’ve definitely been thinking about that. Also I moved recently and my toddler got into a box that had a lot of old letters from my friends when I was a teen. Reading those again and thinking about people I hadn’t seen or spoken to in years and wondering what they were doing now was quite bittersweet.

Naturally but more because I’m happy I can give my DC the magical Christmas experiences I never had.

This year I'm feeling very nostalgic for my dcs childhood Christmases. They'll turn 16 and 18 in the next couple of months and I'm very aware of time slipping by this year.

I do my best not to remember.

I love christmas so much

But this week ive been paralysed by childhood memories, yanbu x

Yes, definitely on NYE I do - all the good times I had with people from my past, in venues and pubs many of which have since closed down. Sheer nostalgia!

At Christmas though, I mainly look back to my own kids being small. I think the christmasses we made for them were more magical than the ones I had as a child - I worked hard to bring in a lot of lovely family traditions, whereas my own christmases were more about keeping relatives happy.

Yes, every year. My family are all now dead, so there is no one to remember with. I have my own little rituals to keep the memories alive. I kept Christmas decorations from all my now-deceased relatives Christmas trees, so I can put them on the tree every year.

I would love to be sitting down to a three-hour board game marathon with my brother, while my mum natters with my gran and my uncle asks if anyone would mind if he smokes a cigar, “since it’s Christmas”? And my gran cutting up the used Christmas crackers to turn the pretty cardboard into gift tags for next year (I still do that, in her memory!). And my dad scanning the Radio Times to make sure we haven’t missed one of the programmes he circled, and then arguing with my brother because we can’t watch two channels at once.

I miss my family, so yes - I think a lot about the Christmases of my childhood.

I get very upset about my DM at this time of the year. She’s been gone 30 years, but to me she’s still ‘home’, and nothing in my life will ever feel like that again.

?

My family Christmases were just me, my DB and our parents and it was lovely. There's no need for Christmas to be filled with people in order to be fun. I enjoyed just being at home and having new things - I was born in the early 1960s when gifts were only for Christmas and birthday and nothing particularly extravagant even then.

Then when my kids were small I was desperately poor, so Christmas was always a bit hand-to-mouth, they didn't get much and none of this 'list for Santa', they got what I could find.

Now they're grown up and we have lovely Christmases, all of us packed into one house or another, as many of the five and their partners as can make it. Lots of food, games, mad dogs, laughter...

Yes often. My dad was abusive in that he would often give us silent treatment, Christmas was no different. Opening our presents without him saying a word and then eating Christmas dinner at the table without him was the norm. Whilst I have mended the relationship I've never spend a Christmas with him for about 20 years. As a result I make sure ours are a lot more fun and they have our full attention all day. Whilst we don't do big dinners because the kids are fussy we have implemented a lot of our own new traditions.

I just loved the tacky tinsel and foil decorations of the 80s, especially when mixed with the old crepe paper ones from the 70s. Glitter eveywhere. Quality street tins. Getting the posh cut glasses out so granny could have some sherry in style. New games releases for the Spectrum. Proper christmas tv shows.. seeing Empire Strikes Back or Temple of Doom for the first time and recording it on vhs. Special episodes of top of the pops, Lenny Henry show, Paul Daniels, Kenny Everett..

When I'm out with the dogs before it gets light, I get glimpses through open curtains of little families eating breakfast, getting ready for school and I remember how safe and secure the world seemed when I was tucking into my porridge before school.

Yes - I had an abusive childhood where I was emotionally tormented daily. Except for over the Christmas and new year period. It was magical. For a couple of weeks my mother was the most amazing person. In hindsight it destabilised me, at the time I adored it and I lived for it each year.

It's a nice memory. In the winter in the 80s, we'd reluctantly get out of our warm beds, piled high with blankets, and run downstairs in our freezing, draughty old house (which only had two gas fires). Mum would be in the livingroom, she'd have lit the fire and our uniforms would be hung out warming on the clothes horse. Then with warm clothes on, we'd get either weetabix or porridge with hot milk. She might even add some brown sugar or honey.

That sounds like us. Two gas fire. Lots of woollen blankets under and over the eiderdown. Frost on the inside of the windows from breath, making beautiful ferny patterns. Warming clothes by the fire. All gone. So extremely poignant. Thank you for sharing yours.

Yes, but sadly mostly negative things my Dad was/is an absolute arsehole and my Christmas memories are tainted with it.

I don't had an unhappy childhood like others above

I don't had an unhappy childhood like others above

We had big extended family chrimases when I was a child they were very happy times. . Nearly all these people have now died and I always miss them at this time of year. I still have happy Christmases with my nuclear family but I still feel a bit sad.