Was an ‘80s Christmas the ultimate Christmas in history?

[CoolShoeshine]

Ive been thinking about my childhood Christmases and I may be biased because of my age but they seemed pretty perfect. I make Christmas the best I can for my dc’s but there is something about modern Christmas that just isn’t as good. It’s like we’ve tried too hard to make it better and better and somehow ruined it a bit.
80s Christmas has the most amazing balance of being fun and decadent but not overdone. We had massive tins of quality street but they wouldn’t be cheap as chips so that everyone is eating them from October onwards- we’d just have them once Christmas had properly arrived. Likewise advent calendars didn’t have chocolates, they had the quaintest pictures each day to set the mood as the month went on. I can remember being so excited to open the double size door on Christmas Eve.
We had amazing Christmas songs in the charts but we still knew all the carols. Carol singers sang outside our house in the cold.
We had thin wrapping paper that wasn’t plastic coated and crepe paper crackers. We did send masses of cards though but cut the pictures with pinking shears to use as tags the following year.it was really exciting if we got over 100 cards in our household to stick in the walls with blue tak.
We had a massive spruce tree which was wonky and shed everywhere so mum would be hoovering on a daily basis, but it was the only tree in the house and touched the ceiling. Lights were always multi coloured but not garish and baubles were too. Tinsel was considered pretty not tacky.
School let us bring in board games to play on the last day of term and the teachers drank wine. We had the most amazing school discos where we did the birdie song and agadoo and we knew all the actions. Boys squirted is with silly string. Christmas didn’t properly start until that day when we finished school on a high and had the anticipation of Christmas within grasp.
We had few tv channels and even less other gadgets so it was a major treat to watch the big movie on Christmas Day afternoon. Likewise top of the pops and only fools and horses. Everyone was watching the same things and talking about them the next day.
I could go on and on. Am I just a nostalgic 40 something or was it really the best Christmas time? Please don’t say no and ruin my memories

YANBU but I do think most generations will look back at their childhood Christmases as the best. I'm mid 30s and view 80s and 90s Christmas as so so magical.

That said, my modern Christmas isn't much different tbh. We've got a picture advent calendar that we've been using for about 10 years. We don't have tons and tons of chocolate in the house. The DC are getting about 3 things each.

My tree is colour coordinated though. And tinsel is banned. But that's how I remember it from when I was small anyway.

You should get to one of the National trust places that are doing a 70's / 80's Christmas - I wanted to go back there forever!
I particularly miss tree lights with that acid pink bulb as well as green/blue/red/yellow. The tone of led lights now is horrible, you cannot beat the traditional pink glow of the lights

Loving the food for Xmas lunch but being impatient for everyone to finish so we could watch top of the pops.

Every day in December until Christmas eve in the Clash nineties household:

Muuu-uuum, can I have a tree chocolate?

'No you bloody can't, they're for Christmas!'

Fond memories ☺

I am 38 and yes everything you say is so true. I think it was only about this time now in the month when we started playing xmas songs when I was young. It's all just too much now.

What a fab post!

I had to call my DS to reminisce. Great times!

Family all together, playing board games, waiting for the soaps, double edition TV Times, circling the toys in the catalogue, strings of cards all over the house, getting snowed in, roller boots, babydolls, cabbage patch kids, cheese and pineapples and mini scotch eggs galore, trifle with dream topping, kids out on bikes and the day seemed to last forever! Such happy times. We feel very lucky!

Another one whose childhood Christmas's were as you describe. And I miss them.
It might be because I've got two granny teens this year but I am not feeling Christmas at all anymore-and I used to love it! It's all a bit over blown and pressurised now and it's lost slot of magic for me.

I am mid-forties and have never seen snow at Christmas. I assume where you come from makes a difference as I’m from the suburban south east.

Awww, yeah......sigh. I'm 44 so right there with you OP

These were my Christmases too! I so fondly remember writing Santa letters then 'sending them up the chimney' to the North Pole. Making a wish into the pudding mixture, Christmas cards, proper picture advent calender, running to the neighbour house on Christmas morning to share the excitement, nativity plays, bad but nostalgic Christmas TV (Frosty the snowman, Rudolph), weeks of planning home made gifts...

Ahh..memories :)

I grew up in Ireland. One thing I really really miss about Christmas in the 80s/90s is the amount of visitors we had, and the visits we made to other people. My parents had lots of friends and I had lots of aunties, uncles and cousins and in the days leading up to Christmas and even on Christmas morning we'd always have people popping in with presents and cards and the tins of posh biscuits would come out. My auntie and uncle in England used to send one enormous box containing presents for all the Irish contingent, which was delivered to our house and we dished it all out. The arrival of the box from England and resulting visits to deliver all the presents was incredibly exciting. Now most of the family friends and the aunties and uncles are no longer with us. The cousins are still around but I live in England now and can't pop in on Christmas morning. I really miss all the visiting.

Also miss the Radio Times ritual but we don't even have live TV anymore!

Our wrapping paper used to come from the market (no Poundland then) and you could get this very cheap stuff, almost like a cross between normal wrapping paper and tissue paper. It was sold by the sheet and was something like 10 sheets for 50p. And the crepe paper crackers. And my mum's lovely little glass bowls with painted red flowers on that we only ever used for Vienetta on Christmas day. I miss all these things. I wish I could have one more childhood Christmas. They were just the best.

Damn. All of this ...

I actually set up a Pinterest board with images I've trawled the net for of this sort of thing.

We had angel hair artfully nested around the sweetie-like glows of the fairy lights, which were tiny lantern shapes, and then we had a set like flowers. At least five different colours including the now-elusive soft pink. I used to look at the decorated, lit tree through the glass in the double doors that divided the living room from the dining room, because the glass was opaque and had tiny studs on, which made each fairylight into a five-pointed spangle - utterly magical.

Tons of cards which gradually got blu tak'd to the opaque glass doors (making it harder to look at the tree through them!). Hardly anyone sends us cards these days.

Foil and tissue paper concertina decorations in swags and weird chandeliers hanging everywhere. Some got sellotaped together over the years. Scrunched up foil and tinsel bird decorations on the tree that mum made from a tutorial on Blue Peter. I used to make tinsel nests for them in the tree. Flocked plastic baubles and decorations that were actually pretty horrible.

The lurid wrapping paper - my mum mostly used it for stocking presents and bought it in the market in a huge roll, all different colours. Royal blue, orange, hot pink and acid greens and yellows predominated and it crinkled. It was SO exciting scrunching it off pillow case presents and it crunched up into tiny balls of colour. I considered buying some vintage sheets of this on eBay this year but it was ££s and fortunately sanity prevailed.

Horribly sweet Asti Spumante, my dad's favourite festive tipple. Vienetta ice cream. Bowls of boiled sweets from Woolies pick'n'mix.

Beautiful post OP

Christmas didn't start too early,now people put their trees up in November and are so jaded that everything is down on boxing Day.
It was definatly a thing keeping your tree up until 12 th night.
I remember aunties drinking snowballs .I was to young and have never tried them as an adult.

Christmas lights were definitely better - beautiful colours but softer and more glowy. They twinkled instead of flashed as well.
I remember my nan's tree was amazing. It was covered in all sorts of stuff that would be considered tacky now, like that coloured stringy stuff and tinsel, but it was beautiful.
I remember circling my TV choices in the Radio Times and arguing with my brother if there was a clash.
I agree with you about singing carols and seeing carol singers out on the streets. And only getting Quality Street and Roses in December and they tasted nice and not like claggy goo.
I think a lot of it though is childhood - we didn't worry about paying for it all, Christmas was magical because it just happened!
For my DC, they had slightly different traditions (circling items in the Argos catalogue rather than the TV guide ) but I think they had great Christmasses too. It changes when you get old enough to realise that a lot of work goes into in and that you have to buy more presents than you get and it does not all just happen by magic!

Presumably you don’t mean 80s Christmases were the best, you mean Christmases when you were a child (as I can assure you 50s and 60s Christmases were best!).

AuntSpiker I still have two of those Christmas baubles from my childhood - so about 60 years old now (I had three until 2 days ago)

Wilco’s have lametta.

Does anyone else remember in the 60/70s Christmas morning the Salvation Army band would play carols on the street corners? Then they'd knock on the doors for a collection. Treats and bar six in the selection boxes and nan always got a yard let gift set, the turkey took a week to thaw and we put the table in the 'best room' ( they had best rooms and living rooms then) the drink would be on the top of the stereogramm and triang had the best toys best of all we had Birds trifle for tea. Christmas cards had lots of glitter on and postie wore a 'proper uniform' with black peaked cap and there was first class and second. All the shops were closed for Christmas and the Christmas club would pay out ( a weekly amount all year).

Yardly gift set.

And I’m sure there was a circus on TV?

And those long boxes of dates

I loved my 80s Xmas as a child, best memories ever. I love coloured lights and tinsel and hate it when people try to be 'tasteful'. Our town's Xmas lights are so boring, all white and sophisticated, I want strings of coloured big bulbs!

I remember it was the only time we got the TV Times as well as the Radio Times. (Until this thread I’d forgotten that there was a time when BBC and ITV listings were separate)

I grew up in a farm house in a small village. The carol singers would go round the village. Our front door was a stable door so mum would open the top bit to watch them and I would perch in the top. When I was a bit older I joined them. We would finish at the Bishop’s house (the bishop of Bath and Wells lived in our village) and have mince pies and sherry with him.

My memories:

Licking the stamps for the Christmas cards (before they became self-adhesive). Still it made a change from licking Coop & Green Shield stamps.

The sheets of thin wrapping paper, and nobody did this thing of 'trimming' presents artistically by selecting the paper, using ribbon, adding bits of tree (!) - you just wrapped, taped and stuck a gift tag on.

Satsuma in the toe of the stocking.

Bowl of nuts on the table, I could open the walnuts but would struggle with almonds and Brazils.

Lametta. Horrible stuff. Bits would fall from the tree and then wrap themselves around the hoover brush so we'd have to get scissors to it. (Hoovering was my chore)

The rest of the family would fall asleep after Christmas dinner, leaving me to watch Top of the Pops without the usual comments of "Who's that?" "What are they wearing?" "Call that music?" or the classic "Is that a girl or a boy?"

Well my memories of Christmases in the 70s and 80s are an absolute a shit show (apart from the glorious teenage years at friends houses).
I love Christmases now, and it's lovely seeing my dds (now 12 and 13) developing nostalgia about our own Christmas traditions.

It's not about it being the 80s, it's about it being your childhood Christmas

Definitely this. Christmas is just more fun if you're a child. It's not that different in many respects. My kids go to Christingle and the Crib service. They do a nativity in school and eat selection boxes on Christmas day. We have a bag of nuts and a nutcracker. Their grandparents probably did the same.Our parents probably thought the 80s Christmas was too commercialised compared to the Christmases of their children.

In 30 years we'll be reading posts about how Christmas in 2019 was the best - all the lovely blue lights, light up reindeer in the front garden, Christmas jumper day at school etc.