Then and now - Christmas things you don't see any more

[housemum]

I was buying some Christmas cards in Sainsbury's and for some reason remembered how we bought cards in my childhood (1970s). I remember going into Woolworths, where you bought a selection box of 20/40 different cards. Mum would spend ages looking through the boxes, but whichever you chose there would always be a couple of really naff kitten-looking-at-a-bauble cards and that dismal brown-tinted sheep-in-the-snow painting. Everywhere now sells a couple of designs only in a pack. Also whatever happened to:

Paper chain garlands, like a honeycomb that stretched out and you pinned to the ceiling

foil garlands - the expensive version of the paper ones

matt wrapping paper by the sheet, usually with the print a little off-centre on each colour. Up until a few years ago I bought this from the local cheap market, and used it to differentiate Father Christmas presents.

Peanuts and cashews in ring pull cans (usually given as gifts - whoopee! )

Christmas tree lights shaped like Victorian lanterns

Christmas may have been tacky back then but it seemed cosier when everything was less "tasteful" :)

No no GlitterKitty don't go down the pink and black route. I chucked out all my old decorations in the nineties and bought all blue and white. It never looked right.

This year I'm zipping up my boots and going back to my roots. It's all homemade and tacky for us from now on. I heart the Seventies.

My mum and stepdad are joining us this for the first time so I'll have plenty of help stepping back in time.

We usually got one of the mesh stockings from Father Christmas too but also a "posh" selection box with a curly wurly in it from my Grandparents. There was always a game on the back with a spinner that you had to cut out and we always had to play it. (was like getting an extra present)

I also remember there being "treats" in one of the selections - yellow packet containing chocolate coated peanuts in a shell like M&Ms but bigger & more egg shaped.

and fortune teller fish inside crackers, those fish were amazing!!!!!!!! Maybe they should give one to David Cameron

I still have some of my families honeycomb decorations from the 70s. I also have the little chinese lanterns that were hung from the ceiling.

What I quite miss is the way christmas lights were done. Today, it's all very bright and public and in your face (which I love too), but there was a very special magic in catching a glimpse of someone else's tree lights through a crack in a curtain or as a door opened.

The box of "eat me" dates that usually lasted to february and the uncrackable nuts that were still going in June.

The christmas circus and Disney clips on the TV.

Ye old oak ham

I could go on :)

HERE multi colour fairy lightd in B & Q.

I remember those pre made stocking with the green netting over the front.

Christmas Top of the Pops.

I know they still do it but it's not teh same now it's not on every week!

HERE multi colour flower fairy lights in B & Q.

I remember those pre made stocking with the green netting over the front.

[snogs wheredidiputit] proper lights! thank you!! now, can I get dressed and to B and Q before 8pm????

Yes, those are my lights

Thanks (i think) AvadaKedavra.

Me and mum a long discussion about how good it was to see 'proper' christmas lights again.

perfume set and holly hobby.

those lights are great, i might have to buy yet another set! i got a colourful set the other week with plain coloured bulbs!

DD insisted on coloured lights on the tree the last two years, and all our baubles are sweetie coloured. I love a tree that looks like it's covered in the colours of the old quality street wrappers.!!

OH brookeslay, I had that perfume set!!! and i had a Holly Hobbie that xmas too!

must have been 77 or 78, thankyou for sharing !!!!

ooh yes I noticed the Toys R Us jingle had changed. But didn't it always used to be "There's millions said Geoffrey all under one roof"? Who was Geoffrey exactly?

Our tree was white with silver strands of glitter on it. Dressed in red and green. It was placed on a coffee table as it wasn't too tall and all the strands that molted off it would fall and sit on top of the paper craft crib that my Mum carefully folded together each year.

Foil garlands to string across the ceiling check! (My friend still does this now).

Honeycomb paper Santa and Anger -check! I keep meaning to make these with my class but haven't got around it yet.

Our advent calendar was a no-chocolate one too and I have two sisters so we had to take it in turns to open the doors each year.

One of my very favourite decorations was the cardboard Santa wall hanging we had. If you pulled the string at the bottom, his arms and legs rose.

Stealth....it was Geoffrey the Giraffe.

well how on earth were we meant to know that!

Penny drops...

I thought the line was "There's millions of debris all under one roof" how embarrassing. To be fair I sang it so rarely or so quickly no one twigged i got it wrong so have never been corrected. Quite why i thought it was debris is beyond me now

Love all of this reminiscing :) I always loved the tree baubles that were covered in thread when I was little, I was only thinking the other day that you didn't see them anymore and lo and behold there they were in Sainsbury's, really made me smile. I tried to explain to DD and DS but they really didn't get it!

But am sure when I was a child they would have been the cheap less posh end of the market, not so now, they were priced the same as all the other fancy ones. :o I wonder if they have been revived as part of this whole nostalgia vibe that's going on as a result of the recession? Simpler times and all that....

Actually I really, really want a nice multi coloured 70's style tree now instead of my beautiful, boring glass and crystal, white lights tree.

Tunis cake with the dry sponge, thick fake choc and three daintily arranged marzipan fruits on the top. Haven't seen one for years.

those proper glass baubles with an indented bit that was a different colour, they were so pretty. I saw them in a posh shop this week, about £4 a pop!

If you liked Newberry Fruits, I think they are now called York Fruits.

yy to the balloons, and it had to be two round ones with one long one every time, to get max snigger effect.

What about the thrill of buying the Christmas Radio Times and TV Times (had to get them both, no joint TV guides then!) to find out what big special programmes were going to be on on Christmas Day.

Splashing out on blank Video tapes prior to Christmas because you were going to need them to record all of the aforementioned big special programmes and fillums.

Nuts! Who the hell ever buys or eats nuts in shells at any other time than Christmas. Certain members of my family, they know who they are < narrows eyes > like < shudder> pickled walnuts.

how did you not know Geoffrey was the giraffe

Because of this thread I'm going to take the kids to the £1 shop this year and let them buy them buy the tackiest decorations ever I can't Wait!

Xmas day tea- regardless of whether you had only had lunch 3 hours earlier! Always consisted of; ham, cold turkey, salad(lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes), Branson pickle, piccalilli, bread and butter, bowl of plain crisps, trifle and Christmas cake ah memories... And if you were lucky, another cracker!!

Oooh I suddenly remember the Fisher Price camper van! Wow that brings back memories.

My parents and their friends were hippies in the 70s, so we never had anything like tinned ham or maraschino cherries, and we always always had a real tree. My mum made home brew alcoholic ginger beer and other dubious and probably illegal hippy conconctions and bartered with friends for brussels sprouts and a goose etc. We did have a massive home made sherry trifle, chocolate oranges, fortune telling fish, brightly coloured fairy lights for the tree etc.

My absolute favourite stocking filler was called "Japanese Water Garden" - a little packet with "seeds" that you dropped into a bowl of water and it unfolded to reveal brightly coloured paper flowers. I wonder if you can still get them?

ooh yes japanese water garden!

my sis had that camper, and i had the Bontempi organ. in fact my mother must have bought half the argos catalogue 1976! (dad had started work on the rigs so we must have been a bit flush)