Christmas Nostalgia Then Vs Now

[VeronicaFranklin]

Christmas time always makes me feel nostalgic.

What is something you had or did at Christmas as a kid that you don't now and miss?

For me it's:

Family (Grandparents specifically)

Foil Christmas decorations that were hung with blue tack from the ceiling in every room...

We always left Sherry out for Santa...

Angel hair tree tinsel that you wistfully sprinkled all over the tree...cat...dog...carpet...

The selection boxes shaped as a Stocking with netting on...

Multi- coloured Christmas tree lights (the old style glass ones that used to get hot to touch and probably presented a massive fire hazard! not the LED coloured ones of today)

Toys R Us advert

Annual trip to see Santa at the Arndale which was usually some bloke who had a really cheap looking wig and beard and was probably not DBS checked!

Only having 5 TV channels so you had to sit and watch Christmas movies when they were scheduled to be on, which some how made it more exciting to watch Christmas films when they weren't available to watch all year round.

Christmas shopping with my grandma looking in the bustling high street department stores, no online shopping.

Searching the sky for Santa on Christmas Eve not tracking him on an app.

I missed foil decorations so much I brought them back into my life about three years ago and have never looked back. House is like a grotto and I love it!

@PlaitBilledDuckyPuss Waiting to find out what was Christmas No 1!

I miss those foil decorations too OP. I also miss carol's round the Christmas tree with my aunty in her village followed by fake KFC as it was the only time I ever had fast food/takeaway as a young child.
We used to also have a crystal bowl that had Quality Street in, a little bowl of salted pistachios on the mantle piece and another bowl with proper nuts and a nutcracker (not that I ever ate the latter as I hated them!)
I've kept up with some things like we always have snowballs at Christmas.

My nan and grandads beautiful tree - covered in shit tons of lametta and twinkly lights and a billion decorations. The massive tins of Roses and Quality Street, waking up and the magic of knowing Father Christmas had been. As I got older, watching Christmas Eastenders and Totp. Getting tipsy on Advocaat to be fair I still do that. Singing carols . People don't seem to do that do much now.

I'm 30 but mainly the simplicity of it.. just circle what you would like in the Argos catalogue and maybe Toys R Us. Now even though kids can circle through the Smyths catalogue you better believe I'm searching online for the cheapest price! I was saying this to my mum that you either pretty much had Argos or Toys R Us. No faffing around in different shops.

My mum used to have top decs and the big light in the living room was in the centre so they'd always be even 🤣. I miss them top decs and the multi coloured lights even down to how she used to put them up in the window. My mum and dad also have some really old baubles that she has had since she was small and I love seeing them on her tree even now. Especially the older Santa faces.

Aww this thread is making me cry! 70/80s childhood here.
Tinsel, Lametta, coloured fairy lights. Setting the tinsel draped over the fireplace by lighting the gas fire!
Christingle service on Xmas Eve, the smell of oranges, candles and burnt hair…
Mince pie and a glass of Sherry for Father Christmas (never Santa!) and carrot for Rudolph.
Being so physically excited on Xmas Eve that I couldn’t sleep so my Dad gave me warm milk with brandy in in… it was like an anaesthetic! 😱
Not being allowed to open our stockings or wake parents until 8am, then me and my sister got into bed with them to open presents, we still did that until I left home.. got rather squished!
Pork pie, cold meats and a whole tongue for Xmas breakfast 🤮
More church, taking one present in to show.
All the grandparents and cousins, adults drinking Sherry, real Coca Cola for kids.
Mum sweating in the kitchen
Nanas paper crown sitting at more and more of a jaunty angle as the Sherry kicked in
Grannies Xmas pud, best ever and still use her recipe today. Sherry trifle “a trifle of trifle anyone?! “ Same joke every year.
Sitting watching each person open one present in strict rotation. Took hours.
Monopoly, which brought out the capitalist tendencies of my family, would last for hours into the evening. Charades. Stop the Bus and Beggar my neighbour.
No tv, only the Queens speech. Was never allowed to watch Xmas TOTP or EastEnders however much we begged.
Christmas Cake and Turkey sandwiches.
Then finally, just before bedtime, the pulling of the massive cracker mum had made one year (thanks Blue Peter!) filled with one small last present for everyone.
Going to bed sad it was all over and we had to wait another year for it.
It was magical.

Definitely especially as a teenager in the early 80s.

“Mince pie and a glass of Sherry for Father Christmas (never Santa!) and carrot for Rudolph.”

Coming from an Irish background, We called him Santy Clause. 😊

"Being so physically excited on Xmas Eve that I couldn’t sleep so my Dad gave me warm milk with brandy in in… it was like an anaesthetic! 😱"

Love it 😂

@FlowersareEverything we are from an Irish background too, but never called him that! I wonder why? 🤔 The meat heavy breakfast was a throwback to my great grandfather having it before he did a busy morning of priesting at Church!

It’s akin to child abuse now, looking back on it 😱 I can still remember the warm dreamy feeling it gave me… perhaps that started my liking for alcohol at an early age?! Safe to say I have never repeated it with my own over excited children on Xmas Eve…

I’ve got Irish parents but never heard Santy until I moved to Ireland then everyone said it.

Fry up was a big thing in my family too, my DF was a butcher and made the best fry ups 😋

The Queen's message

I still buy the little bottles of snowballs. I bought Babycham one year but it wasn’t quite the same as when I was a kid and we were allowed our own sneaky glass. My Nan also always had a Buckfizz Christmas morning.

My Nan's trifle. I feel so sad that I won't ever have it again. I could try to make it but it wouldn't be the same. 😥

My dad going into the garden and jingling bells outside our bedroom window (we were in a ground floor flat) once we were in bed on Christmas Eve.

The setting on the multicoloured Christmas tree lights that flashed each colour at a time.

Grampy drinking whiskey and water that became steadily more whiskey and less water each time he poured one then falling asleep on the sofa.

Crap presents from my Nan. Itchy wool jumpers, hankies....one year, toothpaste! I look back fondly though now as an adult 🤣.

Going halves with a family member for a tin of quality street and evenly sharing them out. One tin was far too big for our single parent family and lasted all Christmas 🤣.

Noel's Christmas presents on Christmas morning
Walnuts and nutcrackers in a bowl. For one week every year.
Roland Rat's countdown to Christmas on to

There are so many things on this thread that have made me nostalgic but this one made me cry. We too had a random assortment of old people in chairs. Mrs Crisell from the village who'd been widowed what seemed like 100 years ago. Gave me a £1 every year at Christmas till she passed when I was 15. Great Auntie Maud who smoked like a chimney and had the most raucous dirty laugh. Aunt Vera and uncle Bill who I now know weren't Aunt and Uncle and to this day I'm not entirely sure why they spent Xmas with us.

The Argos make up set. I would have died for one of them.

The proper Quality street Tina

The foils decs and multicoloured lights. Spending hours looking for the one bulb that had gone. I though my Mum was so posh when she upgraded to white lights.

DH's family start Christmas with a full on fry up. Comes from the days when they were milking.

They haven't milked since the 1990's

I also loved the foil decs hung from the ceiling - and the smell of them!

The excitement of writing out your Christmas cards and putting them in the little school postbox at primary school- and then receiving them too. I was also picked to be the postwoman one year delivering them all to the different classrooms which made me feel dead important!

Getting a dandy, beano AND Bunty annual every Christmas- these were my absolute favourite presents and would be pored over again and again.

Also loved circling things in the Argos catalogue and what I wanted to watch in the tv times. My favourite was Santa Claus: the movie with Dudley Moore!

This thread is lovely! There’s quite a bit that I miss, some of which have been mentioned already.

Radio/TV Times - it was so exciting finding out what was going to be on and circling everything.
YY to the stockings with netting for chocolate.
Coming downstairs and smelling the large turkey already cooking.
Christmas TOTP.
The community sleigh visiting all the local streets, was magical when you started to hear the music and knew it would be outside the house shortly.
My grandparents, always lots of laughter (and snoring after dinner!)
Being in the back of the car at night during the lead-up to Christmas - gazing at all of the houses with their lights and trees. I’m always the driver now, so eyes are on the road!
My dog - he was the handsomest dog ever. So many childhood Christmas photos with him in. He’s been gone over 30 years, but can still “feel” him on the sofa next to me.
My sister’s mattress would be dragged into my room on Christmas Eve and we’d always be determined to stay awake and catch out Father Christmas. Never managed it! I loved those nights.
Just the innocence and magic of it really.

Oh, and every Christmas Eve Tom & Jerry’s The Night Before Christmas would always be on TV - I can still picture Jerry sliding down the candy can on the tree with his tongue out, licking off the red stripe. I’ve just googled it, can’t believe it was made in 1941 !

Yes to the Argos catalogue! I found out on here several years ago that the old Argos catalogues are online - I spent ages browsing the ones from the late 80s and remembering the toys I got from 'Santa'

Why have I never heard this before?

Our Christmas stockings were like the stockings you can wear, only a sort of baked bean colour😂Waking up to see a long, knobbly stocking stretched across the bed was so exciting!

Mum had the festive Radio and TV times too- it had a special green folder thing that held them both. Separately, my Dad had both and would spend days going through each, circling what he wanted to watch v what he wanted to record on his double video recorder.

Paper streamers that had thread running down the middle- you fastened one end to the ceiling and the twisted it and joined it to the opposite diagonal bit of ceiling.

And a plastic shiny bell that had a string you could pull and it would play Jingle Bells. Mum hung it over the stairs and we'd give it a yank every time we passed (and with 5 kids in the house it got yanked a lot!)

We always had orange and lemon jelly slices too- they sell them in Wilko now so they've become our tradition too.

One vivid memory turned out to be not quite true though- in my memory we had huge, bushy Christmas trees, the top of which would be decorated from the first floor landing. Then when I was going through old photos it turned out to be a twiggy, sparse-looking thing 😂 Still glorious in my head though.

My sister and I used to put our hairbrushes under our bed sheet, in the hope of rolling onto it in the night and waking up to see Father Christmas (no Santa in our house).
It never worked. We never saw him. But rather oddly I think our Mum and Dad used to wait up for him too as we used to hear lots of up and downing the stairs and hurried whispers once they thought we were asleep.