70s-style Christmas

[ChristmasMad1]

Hi all,
I live with my grandparents and want to do a 1970s-themed Christmas for them this year. I wasn’t alive then, but I love everything about the 70s — the music, colours, fashion — and I’d love to make it nostalgic and fun for them.
Only thing is, I don’t really know what a 70s Christmas was actually like! And all the food needs to be gluten-free, so I’ll have to adapt recipes.
Would love ideas for:

• Typical 70s Christmas food/decorations/traditions
• Gluten-free versions of 70s treats or desserts
• Budget-friendly decorations or music to set the scene

I really want to make it special for them, so any tips or memories would be amazing.

I would start here.

Also watch Fanny Cradock Cooks for Christmas on BBC iPlayer.

There's a thread about this here ATM
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/food_and_recipes/5433733-seventies-christmas

Cute idea!

Tinsel and lots of it!
Lamenta (is that what the silver stranded stuff is called?)
Home made paper chains with coloured paper / wrapping paper

Brightly coloured tree lights, glass kaleidoscope baubles

Lots of paper and foil decorations and lots of colours. Tinsel
Morcambe and Wise on the tv
Snowballs, Babycham. Mateus or Blue Nun.

Random size chairs and stools around the table as no one ever had enough matching chairs for all the guests.

Melon boat to start. Turkey, Paxo, roast potatoes and sprouts. Christmas pudding or Arctic roll, Birds trifle. After eight mints.
Cheap crackers with daft jokes, everyone wore the crown.

An evening buffet of open sandwiches, always egg and cress, tinned red salmon. Selection of things on cocktail sticks, cheese and pineapple, cheese and silverskin onions, sausages. Bowl of salad, left over turkey, slices of ham. Mince pies. Christmas cake covered in rock hard icing. More Birds trifle with hundreds and thousands on top.
Boxes of matchmakers, bowls of nuts and a nutcracker hanging around. Sticky dates.

Selection boxes. Radio Times. Monopoly, Mousetrap Annuals of Jackie, Blue Peter etc.

The decorations I remember are home made paper chains, and white home made snowflakes stuck on the windows.
Radio Times and TV Times, with everyone marking what we anted to watch. Watching the Queen's Speech was compulsory.
Crackers were always made of red or green crepe paper, with a hat, a joke and a fortune telling fish inside.
Washing up always took forever, and we always used "the best" china for lunch. With serving bowls, which wasn't the norm!
I remember it always being cold when we came downstairs, until the coal fire had been lit and the heat started to circulate.
Lunch was turkey, roasties, paxo stuffing, sprouts, carrots, peas and gravy. Followed by Christmas pudding with great excitement as to who would get the hidden sixpence inside. We always had it with cream, but I think most had brandy butter. Sometimes with a choice of Vienetta or a Sara Lee gateau too.
In the evening, left over cold turkey buffet with salad, pickled onions, pork pie, sausages on sticks, crisps, and home made trifle. Or a mince pie.
And don't forget the satsuma in the stocking!

Vintage christmas wrapping paper
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/365912150070

Vintage christmas cards
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/116289202128

A real tree with multi coloured lights, tinsel, these pipe cleaner people
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/256888523375
These baubles
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/406180342679

Silver foil garlands hanging from the ceiling

So far I have bought wrapping paper and cards. I'm trying to do this on a budget do still using what I already have (e.g. tree, most decorations).

Is there anything key to the tree decorations? Because in my household it's always colour scheme but I assume that wasn't a thing

You want the tree to be decorated in all the colours of a tub of quality streets

Our 70s Christmas tree which was always a real one had so much tinsel, lights and glass baubles plus chocolate tree decorations that you almost needed sunglasses to go into the lounge as the ceiling and walls were also highly decorated with brightly coloured paper bells and balls plus the glittery chains in red and gold. To finish off the room, clusters of balloons in all the corners.

Christmas was not just for us kids, it was for our dad who usually went mad with the decorations.

Dont forget to display Christmas cards on the walls, usually around the fireplace.
I do remember making snowflake decorations for the windows with my gran. White paper doilies cut up with patterns (like making paper dolls) and stuck on card with a bit of cotton to hang up.

Just load every colour of the rainbow onto the tree

Make sure the tree is bought from Argos or with Green Shield Stamps and is white not green

Music by Slade/Wizzard/Elton and Jackson

TV Morecambe and Wise, Two Ronnies, and Some Mothers Do Have ‘Em

Children get pants, socks, a tangerine, nuts and in their stocking

Toilet role on the table instead of napkins.
Lots of candles incase of power cuts or trying to make the electricity last as you just remembered that there wasn’t enough shillings stacked by the metre to last you Christmas and Boxing Day

And don’t forget to have a meltdown when you can’t get the turkey in the oven at 4am or you have got turkey in the oven but forgot to turn the oven on
The blazing rows every few hours because no one likes their family and no alcohol besides a bottle of QC Sherry and Advocaat

Christmas tree decorations would have been accumulated over many years, so very unmatching. And probably very flammable! Don't think you'll be able to truly recreate the vintage look of old decorations.

@CheeseWineFigs has it spot on - as colourful as a tub of Quality Street wrappers.

Coloured tree lights. Lameta (long silver tinsel strands). Tinsel on the tree.

Foil hanging garlands for the ceiling. Also foil stars and Christmas tree shapes. I don't know if mainstream shops sell them but I've seen them in those household goods shops on the high street that stock nearly everything.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/christmas-ceiling-decorations/s?k=christmas+ceiling+decorations

Basically, explosion in a tinsel factory is what you're aiming for. But do be wary of fire hazards.

Vol au vents. Cheese and pineapple On sticks. Primula cheese piped into celery sticks. Pork pie. Quality street. God I want a 70s Christmas now too.

On FB there are lots of nostalgia groups about the 70s - masses of Xmas pics there.

Certainly no matching decorations! The idea of matching came in in the 80s (not for us though!).

Definitely lots of mis-matched decorations and multi-coloured lights.Aldi last year had good dupes at a good price (bought 3 boxes!). A tree was probably silver tinsel - or real.

Get a box of cheap Xmas cards and string them round the room. In the 70s people used to get loads of cards; last year I received hardly any.

My dad used to pin these across the ceiling. I seem to remember that he always put them up, even into the 90's.

Cheap on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Enjoyard-Christmas-Ceiling-Decorations-Garlands/dp/B0FQCL5JDL/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=35LFBW0HDAHJ2&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.V_Iu8WeqFevKkOPPwdL-YIPPwg8cKqmgwgPctWZAaNPE8YjEkb2_mpSitztVR1RWzYWBFRilgh1qBAvhUuT3UxrckXujiFvCrFpEZnSdlc7Sn6KqMrJA76BtfqpVT3_fV8GBFyeaLTYAFVlFOKu8B1uTGC2ShfxPn4aG0hba6nimnCmfpXc3nqJ9Q9pMdAyLcSBGBNs-5-SMHODkbSBIams9ecu6hgXj5ZKJqLwxQE_035Sx0F1FfVajP5ulggf_L-462lIbqa8r4ugZKQnHx03QpBCJdT4UJ4UrqH5ZVnY.wFnJkdy9ApVKxgU0geNC5MnCQTSyipnTwOncXTI518w&dib_tag=se&keywords=70+s+christmas+decorations&qid=1761557853&sprefix=70%E2%80%99s+christmas+%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1

I bought these last year as my grandfather was always going on about these! I would ask my grandparents but I would like this to be a surprise as I decorate everything.

How would I decorate the hallway?

Tinsel, lamenta and angel hair for the tree. Random tree toys. Coloured lights. We had foil streamers and hanging decorations. Advent with pictures (no chocolate). My mam made snow scenes with cotton wool, a church, and little people.
Christmas lunch same as today.
Babysham, snowballs, to drink in the day/evening.
Selection boxes.
Mam had a cardboard box that she started buying treats weekly for in advance. It came out on Christmas eve, along with plates of mixed nuts. Things like liquorice wheels, chocolate brazils, chocolate raisons, and loads of chocolate bars. Thorntons bars. Nougart.
It was just fab.
Music was Elvis and Jim Reeves Christmas albums, or traditional carols.
There's loads of 70's christmas pop classics as well.
White Christmas, Wizard of Oz, Sound of Music - were always on the TV (3 channels).
Enjoy!!

The shiny stuff to hang on Christmas trees is called Lametta and you can still buy it.

In your hallway you would have balloons, always in little groups in the corners. Perhaps a holly wreath on the door and paper chains.

The 1979 Christmas episode of To the Manor Born and The Good Life 1977 special both really show exactly what Christmas was like at that time.

Ohhh and nobody bought gift tags. You cut up last years Christmas cards (perhaps with pinking sheers) made a hole in the corner and threaded string through.

Try to find shows from the 70s on YouTube - in particular Morecambe and Wise, Mike Yarwood, the original Generation Game with Brucie Forsyth and Anthea Redfern, Top of the Pops Christmas Special from one year of the 1970s.

If they/you have an old Quality Street tin, buy the refill box of mixed chocolates called The Big Mix from M&S and put them in that tin - they are so like original QS, even smell the same!

Find original tree decorations which don't match - we always used the same ones but bought just a couple of new ones every year. Coloured lights are a must!

Carols from King's on TV on Christmas Eve, whilst drinking mulled wine and eating vol au vents and sausages on sticks (no bacon round the sausages!).

Dates in a box, orange and lemon slices, Turkish Delight, unshelled nuts in a dish with a nutcracker, Tunis cake or the M&S Iced Madeira Cake which is lovely!

Try a capon for Christmas Dinner - tastier than chicken but not as dry as turkey.

This is making me nostalgic - maybe I should do it too!

A green garland wound around the stairs?

Coloured lights. But they need to be soft coloured lights not harsh led ones. Look for the strands that have pink and turquoise bulbs included and avoid harsh blue, not easy to find but it’s possible. The decorations were multicoloured baubles, very fragile. We had loads of lammetta on our tree but (unlike the majority of households) no tinsel or decorations hanging from the ceiling.

Food:Prawn cocktail starter, Turkey, sprouts, carrots, roasties, bread sauce, chestnut stuffing (my Mum was a good cook), gravy. Christmas pudding and rum sauce, mince pies and brandy butter.
Evening: cold turkey sandwiches, Christmas cake.
Treats: Big tin of quality street, selection boxes, After Eights, Newberry Fruits, box of dates (urgh!)

Eyewateringly dangerous Christmas lights that took 3 hours to untangle and get working - great shapes (I remember ours were little glass lanterns) but if one bulb blew that was it, you spent ages working your way down the string replacing them one at a time. Spare bulbs only available at the hardware shop in town 7 miles away, or if you were lucky your neighbour might have one.

We also had some clip on holders for real candles.

No internet, so all shopping had to be done well in advance and locally unless you had A Catalogue which sold all manner of everything on the never never, but quite long delivery times.

Mum reused the christmas wrapping paper from year to year so no sellotape, it was wrinkled and weird sizes, and you had to unwrap carefully. I still love ripping open presents.

Paper chains made at school.

Absolutely no concept of colour coding on the christmas tree, just a mashup of whatever you had. Everything was very fragile and expensive. Home made angel on the top of the tree.

Proper christmas tree that really smelled of pine but started dropping its needles within a few days and by the time the tree came down every needle was embedded in the carpet/your feet.

Christmas dinner washed up by hand by dad, who left the difficult bits to soak. (This was the only domestic chore I ever saw him do).