The simple things you remember most about Christmas

[crochetmonkey74]

I'm not one to judge - each to their own - but the juggernaut of Christmas 'extras' now seems mad and got me to thinking about my memories of Christmas- none of which were present based.
Things I remember most are : starting to see tangerines in the grocer, all stacked up next to the shelled nuts and with those boxes of dates. The grocers looked all lit up on the walk home from school- and it would make me feel really Christmassy.
My other big one is the feeling of a heavy stocking on the bottom of the bed- it was always filled with tiny things that I can't remember- but always a chocolate Father Christmas sticking out of the top!
We had a set of Christmas tapes from Readers Digest (just found a set on Amazon for way too much but bought it anyway)
also, we used to listen to the St Winifreds School Choir 'Christmas For Everyone' record and light our very cheap cinnamon smelling candle - even now any cheap christmas candle (the ones that smell of burnt plastic cinnamon) makes me feel all Christmassy

What are your simple festive memories?

Dad secretly making a Christmas pudding when everyone was out, then hiding it (ie in the loft under a hat) and saying he hadn’t bothered this year until ‘Ta da!’ on Christmas Eve. Decorating the tree with Mum and then standing with only the tree lights on and looking at the room reflected in the coloured baubles, as she had also done as a child.The little soft stocking ornament which our beloved family cat would repeatedly remove from a low bough of said tree - but only when unobserved. I miss them all.

@jo10000
Omg what was that rubbish I wrote lol. Meant to say, it wasn’t unheard off for .......

☺️ love the sniff factor!

Mathsanxiety - you write very well!

This is such a wonderful thread! Did anyone ever receive late Christmas presents in January, or even later, because the giver had forgotten they'd had them, or 'lost' them before Christmas? My nanna and now my mother both did this 😂

This is one of the best threads I have read on here all year. Child of the sixties but seventies Christmases are the ones I remember better. Loved the build up to Christmas learning carols at school &a part in the Sunday school nativity. New dress for parties & Christmas (even in secondary school trousers were not acceptable for the girls). Making decorations & baking with my mum & gran. The Christmas day sherry party with the neighbours &being allowed to sneak off early to watch Christmas TOTP. So many brilliant memories & soap on a rope.

Just been reading through some more of the lovely posts here and another memory has come back to me.
I was born in 1966 and from 1969 until 2013 my Dad bought me a Rupert annual for Christmas. We would sit together to read it and he would put different character voices on for me. Even when I was in my forties we would race to find the "spot the difference" page and see who could do it first.
After 2013 Dad got Alzheimer's and then would forget to buy me the annual, so I bought it myself and would share it with him as usual. Although at the end he didn't even recognise me, he would still get pleasure from looking at a Rupert annual. He died last year, and remembering this has made me smile and weep a bit. I'll go shopping next week and get this year's annual, but I won't look at it until Christmas Day.
I do miss him.

whatkatydidnext1 good for you! I love Little Donkey! You sound lovely. You been a constant warm presence on this lovely thread.

mathanxiety. Wonderful post (you have me crying - again! Bloomin' hormones!). You've reminded me how much I loved the Christmas fetes. Not just our school one. My mum would scan the local paper each weekend to find our where there was one happening locally. I can still remember the sense of anticipation waiting for the doors to open and that particular smell in the halls that held the fetes. Hard to describe - I think they smelled of wooden floorboards and the 1970s!

girlandboy those sound like such sweet memories of your dad.
for you this Christmas.
Babooshka my Gran always used to take me to a Christmas craft fair - it was every Sunday in December and we usually went at least once, or more if I could persuade her. I used to love it so much and save all my pocket money to spend there! I don't remember much of what I bought (lots of stuff made from felt, etc) except some gift tags I got one year that had left ventricular, rabbits etc on them and were very glittery!

Ventricular?! God knows where that came from. It should have said mice!

girlandboy I do feel for you. I lost my dad last year too, and he also had Alzheimer's. He loved Christmas so much. Can't hear his favourite Christmas song, Frank Sinatra's Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas without bawling my eyes out. Especially the line 'through the years we all will be together, if the fates allow.'

PrivateParkin. That is quite the typo! . Yes, everything made of felt at those craft fairs. I wasn't very handy myself but when I was 7 I made my mum a felt butterfly pin cushion and needle-case shaped like a pear. I'd forgotten all about them until we were clearing my DP's house last year and I found she'd kept them all those years 😔

That's lovely Babooshka. It must have been so emotional to find them. I used to have all kinds of ambitious plans to make loads of gifts and every year I'd come unstuck. I remember crying one Christmas Eve because I was making something for my sister that was never going to be finished in time, and my mum knocked on my bedroom door to give me a Ladybird book to wrap up for her. Thanks Mum!

Ah, PrivateParkin*, see, mums are the best!

We could probably have a whole thread about homemade gifts that went wrong!

for you too Babooshka Bittersweet hey..

sorry to make anyone cry.

The picture advent calendar has gone down a treat! Dd2 is more excited by it than dd1 but there was bickering about the organisation of turns first thing this morning

☺

Going into the local market town on a Saturday morning with dad in the week before Christmas. We would park on Market Hill and cross the road into the ancient wooden-beamed chemist shop to buy some toiletries as presents for mum, aunts and uncles. Back to the car to drop them off, then back over the road and along a bit to an independent family run wine shop. Joined the queue of others who brought their own decanters into which various sherries and fruit wines would be poured out of wooden casks. Then you bought these types of things by draught! It was by word of mouth and by telephone that the message "the wine is in" got around.

Oh and snow or if not snow then hard frost and icicles!

Clearly showing a bit of age here, but it was around the mid 70's.

Does anyone remember the Twix selection pack from the mid 90's that came with a Christmas mix tape?! I remember my uncle buying it for me, I was so excited! First time I ever heard 'Step into Christmas' by Elton John as it was on the tape, which is one of my 14 year old dd's favourites now!

After my Dad finished work on Christmas Eve him and my Mum would go to the supermarket with his Christmas bonus money to get all the food and drink, me and my sisters would be so excited when the taxi pulled up outside our house to see what they'd bought! After we'd sorted it all, we'd go for a walk to look at all the lovely houses with their lights outside, there was one road in particular that had AMAZING lights on every house. There was one particular house with a full nativity scene on the front garden and we'd be so excited to see it every year!

This is such a lovely thread! It's making me wonder what my DCs will remember when they're grown up.

I don't really have good memories of Christmas from when I was little - small dysfunctional family who didn't really do anything. But I just have one thing (other than keeping the same tree, now on its 30th year, and the old decorations) that I tried to recreate:

Those jelly sweets shaped like orange and lemon slices. My grandma always had a box of them, and because I was the only child in the family I would always the little round one in the centre of the tray.

I don't mean I only got the centre sweet because I was a child BTW :o just that I was allowed it as an extra :o

Those jelly sweets shaped like orange and lemon slices

OH GOD YES

That was a proper Proustian moment, that picture.