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

What a way to piss on a lovely thread MiniGuinness

Anyway, I was born in the late 80s but I have similar memories of a 90s Christmas. My parents would buy loads of snacks and sweets and keep them in the cupboard under the stairs. They'd usually bring them out once we'd broken up from school. I was allowed a glass of cheap fizzy wine with dinner in fancy glasses only reserved for Christmas. We didn't have pigs in blankets either. Was that a recent thing?

Lametta was something we never had (tinsel all the way). I didn't know lametta until I went to Germany and thought it was a German thing. There's a thing Germans say about nostalgia for Christmases past: 'There used to be more lametta' ... which just sort of means everything this thread is about, the idea that Christmas was better back then.

(My MIL's lametta was made of lead )

I watched Back in Time For Christmas too

I agree, it's your childhood Christmas that's special. One thing that's strange for me is that for all I was very much a 90's child (born late 80s), a lot of my Christmas memories tie in with the 80s experiences - lametta, foil decorations, coloured lights with tulip shades or funny spiky ones that you really didn't want to accidentally stand on in the decorating process. Watching lots of Only Fools and Fawlty Towers when it was on. My parents must have been slow to get with the times and the whole house was a fire hazard.

I suspect its still a magic time for small children. We older folks over do it. Older children nowadays seem much more concerned with their phones and computers and would rather be online with their virtual friends than spending time with family.

Yep that was our Xmas OP! It kind of still is in lots of ways though..I still have old fashioned coloured lights and tinsel. We wear paper hats at dinner.. I make snowballs for visitors, we see lots of relatives, we watch a Xmas film together. I do miss Xmas Top of the Pops though, and will never forgive Cadbury for what they did to Roses.

My 1980s Christmas was exactly as the OP describes. Reading other posts, I'd forgotten about Christmas tree chocolates!!!!

I try to keep Christmas as simple as possible for the DCs (age 7 and 9). I just don't like the over commercialisation and pressure nowadays. We put the tree up today and me and DH had an obligatory glass of sherry. No colour coordinated tree - lots of baubles and 'decorations' that the kids have made over the years . We don't do elf on the shelf, Christmas Eve boxes or any of the 'modern' stuff. The kids have never mentioned those things so don't feel they're missing out.

The kids have chocolate advent calendars but only because grandparents buy them! On Christmas Day we still have prawn cocktail starter and watch Top of the Pops.

This is a lovely thread.

I grew up in the 90s and can relate to so much of this. Agree completely about how LED lights don't have the same softness, the colours and the gentle twinkling created an atmosphere.

One thing I really remember growing up was in junior school on the last day of term before Christmas we'd have a big Christmas lunch in the sports hall. The sports and lunch halls were next to each other but separated by a sliding wooden door/wall thing, they'd open it all up to be one big room, put up loads of decorations and have Christmas songs playing over the speakers. We'd each get a little mini Christmas meal, fond memories eating mine while Slade was playing, felt so festive. :) and we all were allowed to bring in games to play in the classroom on the last day as well.

There does seem to be a trend now for "tasteful" and minimalist decs. My town centre's tree is just a cone of white lights, not even an actual tree underneath. It looks shit!

Love this thread.
Anyone remember getting Twinkle Bunty and Mandy annuals. My sister was a couple of years older and got Jackie and Blue Jeans. I used to love doing the quiz in them. For example what kind of girlfriend are you??

Wish I had kept them.

Also my grandparents used to have a little angel with a trumpet. It was put on the mantel piece and used to spin when it got warm from the fire.

Always remember opening my presents in my polyester dressing gown and been told not to sit too close in case it caught on fire. No health and safety then!

Beautiful tree, @70sWitch. Where did you get the lights from?

The pic of the baubles made me nostalgic too - anyone remember the silk thread ones?

Yes! They were polystyrene inside weren't they? We had the most fantastically naff decorations in our pub in the 70s. My dad and I would spend hours decorating, with all the streamers meeting in the middle of the room. And there at the centre would be the crowning glory: a flat cardboard half bell shape that opened out into a beautiful intricate tissue paper bell.

Fks sake. Op. You've made me cry.

I remember when videos first came out feeling really out of sync with other people because I couldn’t get excited about last nights film with them.
That might sound a bit dramatic ( I can be very sensitive) but I felt a big gap open up between me and other people. I guess I was pretty alienated to begin with, but that didn’t help!

Posted early!
The best bit about my 70 s Christmas was budgeting for presents. I spent hours daydreaming of buying the perfect presents.
I got my big sister bohemian rhapsody, I skulked around the record department in Woolies for ages before I felt brave enough to ask for it!
My kids were teens before they went shopping on their own, and I think they miss out.

I remember my family friends brining round presents before Christmas that went straight under the tree - I then always sat next to the tree shaking the presents when my mum went out of the room to guess what they were - 90% of the time they were advent calendars but it didn’t stop me checking them constantly 😂

One year I got a dusty bin and emptied all my advent calendars in them - lasted for months!

Also loved the sherry trifle (out of a box) with the hundreds and thousands on top.

Best present was when everyone got new bikes and spent Christmas morning cycling around the streets in a big gang!

Also - those small card everyone uses to write and swap with everyone at school - I got some for my daughter to give out but everyone thought it was a birthday party invite as no one sends them anymore at her school.

I’m welling up reading the op! I’m in my early 40s and this pretty much was my Christmas. I’ll add the anticipation of watching the next weekly episode of the Box of Delights in 1984, the last episode was aired on Christmas Eve. My sister was always given a That’s What I Call... /Now... album for Christmas and today, the minute I hear Fearghal Sharkey’s ‘A Good Heart’, I’m in childhood Christmas Day mode!

We used to have these lights (pic from Google). I love multicoloured lights. They bring back so many memories but I have white ones now in my home. Maybe one day if I have a house big enough for two trees I'll make one an 80s tree

We had those lights too. If you wanted them to flash you had to change one of the bulbs. If they stopped working you had to check all the bulbs to find out which one had gone!

We also had satin baubles. I think they may still be in my parents' attic!

Those are my lights!

@Crankybitch the small cards are still going strong at my dd's school! In spite of the school trying to be eco purists and encouraging them to do other things instead

Such a fabulous thread. Brings back many memories of my 70s/80s childhood. I particularly remember in the Christmas holidays watching all sorts of old films on the TV in the mornings. No video then. I watched all the old Elvis films, old musicals like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Carousel, Audrey Hepburn, old westerns - it was a real education!

I loved Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, @thebookeatinggirl!

Agreed, OP.

This from 1981 must be a contender for the ultimate 80s Christmas Advert.

I remember being really disappointed when it disappeared after Christmas as my sister and I used to -squawk tunelessly- sing along to it.

Getting crates of pop delivered, and having exotic flavours like cherryade and cream soda.

A tin of Quality Street in the kitchen from the beginning of December, that you were only allowed to open on Christmas Eve night. The squeaky colourful wrappers and the smell of chocolate when you finally opened the tin were so exciting.

Making peaks in the royal icing on the Christmas cake with the flat of a knife to resemble snow, and sticking plastic robins and Santa decorations on it. The scale was all wrong, but so what?

Foil decorations strung across the living room ceiling of our council house. They’d fall down from time to time, and you had to duck, but it turned the house into a magical grotto.

My favourite night of the run-up was decorating night. Dad would go In The Loft for the tree, and a couple of suitcases full of decorations. It was like meeting old friends again, seeing the decorations we’d all made at school over the years. Dad would roast some chestnuts and get his Christmas LPs out - Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como.

On Christmas morning, we’d open our stockings on mum and dad’s bed, and then the tree presents would be handed out, with dad reading out each label, and round of applause for each gift. We were a big family and it took hours.

Dad died last month, and Christmas memories of him are my favourite ones. He loved it.