I was a small child in the 1980s. There definitely were lots of Christmas activities, but the big change is that these were usually organised or associated with school and church, rather than today’s commercial events that you pay for. So I suppose they were much more community (and faith) oriented, than today’s much more secular activities which you buy tickets to attend. It’s a shame: community has been replaced by commerce.
Though commerce-wise, we did usually see the Rotary Christmas float go past our house, and also would go to see Father Christmas at a department store grotto; plus a trip or two into town for Christmas shopping and to see the decorated department shop windows. Nowhere here really does those any more, they’re a forgotten bit of Christmas (unless you travel to eg. New York; they don’t even do them in most London stores any more!) — but we had four of the big traditional department stores in our city, and they would do different Christmassy “story” type shop window displays in all their big windows, which people would make a special trip to see.
At school we would have various Christmas crafting, party and carol service activities in the run-up to Christmas (it was the only time the glitter was allowed out in primary schools of the 1980s 🤣) - these included making Christmas cards, calendars for the next year, Christmas party hats, and so on. There would be a school Christmas party and a small gift, and tons of carol singing, and a concert, plus usually a school carol service, and of course the Nativity play! (Later, at my secondary school, they used to go all out and have a really big carol service in the local cathedral complete with poetry readings and lots of performances by the school choir - it was a big highlight of the school year.) The school choir was usually also drafted in to do a tour of the local old people’s homes to sing at their Christmas parties, too, which inevitably included wearing a party hat and eating a mince pie.
At church, we did carol singing evenings going round nearby streets (which I enjoyed enormously because it was like being in a book about the past); there would be Christmas parties or events for the Brownies/girl guides, a Sunday school party, all the Advent services, a carol service and a separate Christingle service, a Christmas church fete, and so on. All the parties were more of the biscuits-and-squash and a mince pie on a plate kind of thing, but they certainly felt pretty festive. Thinking back, it’s hard to appreciate how many church events there were geared to Advent and Christmas: we’re not particularly religious now, so you just forget just how much of the run-up to Christmas was created by church activities. Loads of em! Four advent services for a start; plus carol services, Christingle, the Christmas Eve and the Christmas Day services, but also a Sunday school nativity, Brownies/Guides parties, carol singing, a Christmas fete/bazaar, and so on. Exhausting, looking back!
There were also other Christmas activities I remember like a Christmas charity bingo night at the local tennis club which I would go to because my mum did some charity work and I liked to go to “help” the bingo caller! Like the church fetes and most other community Christmas events, it also inevitably involved a Christmas tombola, old-fashioned decorations from the 1960s strung up around a church-type hall, and mince pies and tea on that particular pale green crockery that community and church halls all seemed to have.
We definitely went to the panto every year (my grandmother LOVED a panto, and was still trying to make me go with her when I was quite an old teenager. I have a lasting, lifelong hatred of panto as a result). In addition to the big panto, there was often a local drama club charity panto on somewhere as well. And usually there would be a Christmassy ballet in town which my mother would book to take me and my sister to.
I remember my parents certainly went out to Christmas meals or discos at their work; and a friend of my dad’s who owned a cafe would do drinks (and yet more bloody mince pies) for all his friends on Christmas Eve in his cafe. (I also have a lifelong hatred of cheap shop mince pies as a result of my 1980s childhood, too.)
In general, there were a lot more Christmas parties at relatives’ houses (we’d have to do a tour of all of the relatives for various family parties over Christmas itself); and generally a lot more Christmas gatherings of the foil-garland-and-mince-pie type, all over the season. Now most of my older relatives have died or are very frail, we no longer do any of that! 🙁
Now that I’ve spent a while thinking about it and writing this post, I actually realise we did an absolute fuckload of Christmas events. Like probably a LOT more than I do today, even with all the expensive lights trails and so on. But I guess we’ve just replaced those more low-key community things - the church fetes and Brownies / school events - with bigger, more commercial activities. Possibly out of a desire to recreate a Christmas season that was much more dominated by church, school and community activities which have often disappeared?
I had honestly forgotten until I sat down to write this just how much Christmas stuff we used to do, because nowadays we would hardly count a mince pie at a fete in a church hall, or a bingo night, or carol singing at a local old people’s home, as a Christmas event. But we were doing loads of those kind of things, and they still made up a general sense of festivity, even if they didn’t cost £60 a family to see a truckload of LEDS in a tree.