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?

So many memories, thank you 🙂🎄
Absolutely, the smell of tinsel.
The foil ceiling decorations. My DM would pull one in from each corner of the room to meet at the light bulb in the middle. They were always stuck up with bit of sellotape and forever falling down.
Sitting in the living room lit up only by the lights of the tree
My DM was a single parent and I am an only child but it still always felt completely magical. As I got older she would let me stay up till midnight and I could choose a small gift off the tree. I remember one year it was a clear yellow pencil sharpener.
Picture advent calendars. The 24th had a double door to open.
My DM used to get me a magazine or comic. I can never remember the name of it but the Christmas one was navy blue and came with a cassette full of Christmas songs and stories. I would listen to it over and over.
The complete and utter belief in magic.
Never getting a Mr Frosty 😁

The drinks cupboard in the sideboard being filled slowly with “grown up” drinks - Babycham, Advocaat, Sherry and Captain Morgan’s rum. The garage filling up with soft drinks we weren’t ever allowed any other time of year.

The coffee table pulled out and laid with a glass bowl full of nuts and the nutcracker, Matchmakers and Chocolate Brazil’s and with the Christmas TV times and Radio Times fanned out.

Coming home from school to find Nan round for the day to batch cook puddings and cakes and getting tipsy.

Nan putting in the turkey orders

The smell of a fresh new annual - Jackie, Patches, Beano, Dandy, Whizzer & Chips - all ordered from the newsagents.

The overwhelming rubber smell and static crackle of our new Christmas slippers...

Opening old-school style advent calendar... postage stamp sized door, nativity scene, not a choc in sight

Watching something on kids tv during the run up which was some sort of schools Christmas song competition

Eating grapes (we never had them usually)

Peanuts from a plastic tub

Fruit and nut mix but picking and eating all the raisins first

Counting Christmas trees on our way home from our grandparents after every Sunday tea in December. We kept a tally in the car! I remember it being unusual to see more than 3 or 4 in the 1st week.

The wooden bowl of nuts on the coffee table.

The ceremonial opening of the tin of roses on Christmas Eve afternoon with a Christmas film.

Another one for the feeling of a bulging stocking was just so exciting.

Having 3 calendars for the 3 of us girls usually one homemade in school, one with pictures and one with chocolates in. The excitement as well if you realised your turn fell on the 24th December for the 'big chocolate'.

We lived in the tropics but had a real Christmas tree stubbornly clinging to life growing outside... It was well over 9ft tall and I remember excitedly watching Dad and my older brother dragging the massive pot up the front steps, through the house into the living room where the top inches wouldn't fit and would hang over, dangling the star just out of reach. It was the scraggliest, ugliest Christmas tree ever but with all my mom's carefully collected baubles on (plus awful styrofoam popcorn things? Idk!) I thought it was amazing.

When "the little boy that Santa Claus forgot" came on we used to shout to my dad and he has to jump up and move the needle on the record player on so we didn't listen to the "sad song".

It's horribly sad. That is, the kind of sad it was when it was new is different from the kind of sad it is now, but

I got it stuck in my head earlier when making the tea, and had to have a big deep breath or two.

Incidentally it's quite difficult to learn to sing: complicated intervals. Once you know it, though, you can use that knowledge to work out complicated intervals in other pieces!

We had the same advent calendar every year. It was really pretty and covered in glitter.

Oh my God I had the same one and I LOVED IT! The gorgeous nativity manger scene and the glitter for the stars. It was infinitely more beautiful than any advent calendar I've seen since.

My stocking with my quite unusual name on in glitter. 😆❤

Being taken to see the Christmas windows at Fenwicks in Newcastle every year. It was always cold and dark on Northumberland Street but the windows were always glittery and magical.

I played in a brass band, we did christmas carols by the christmas tree outside the town hall on xmas eve, then home for my mum's xmas eve staple dinner (meat & potato pie) and quality street. The Sally Army band did the rounds on christmas morning.
Now we have an organised group of adult carol singers come round on xmas eve (rotary club I think). We open the front doors, the dogs all go out to receive attention from the singers and we listen, donate some coins then go back in for dinner and xmas eve pyjamas. I hope my DC will have fond memories of this event in years to come.

Does anyone else remember the sleigh rides in large Coop stores?

You sat in a “sleigh” and the scenery panels moved (I believed the sleigh was moving until I was about 7!)

Yes, yes, yes. You sat in a row of seats in a room and each year there was a different scene going past on the walls and it actually felt like you were moving and then you'd get out at 'the other end' and Father Christmas would be there. So exciting

Little bowls of Quality Street dotted around - and we were allowed to help ourselves!
Getting the (tiny, artificial) tree down, dusted off and put up, and hanging chocolate decorations on it (the weight of about three used to tip it over, and there would be 'words' about how it needed to be put back up).
Christmas Radio Times
Blue Peter and the Advent Crown lighting. I used to watch Blue Peter way past the age it was aimed at around Christmas, just for this.
Christmas morning - there actually being PROGRAMMES TO WATCH! (I grew up in the 60's/70's, with no daytime TV. Watching Play Away or similar on Christmas morning was part of the excitement.

The Boxing Day fight between DM and DGM

Also buying boxed pastel-coloured bath cubes and rose-shaped soaps from Boots as gifts for e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e

Lovely thread, such sweet memories.

For me it was the smell of candles, I still associate that smell with Christmas.
Picking out the Christmas tree with mum.
The box of decorations, especially the little wooden Christmas tree made from birch with curly shavings being the branches.
The smell in the air, crisp and wintery.
Seeing the present pile under the tree grow in the days leading up and sneaking looks at the tags to see who they were for and trying to guess what they were from the clues mum wrote on them.
Listening to the Declaration of Christmas Peace on mum's special radio that could pick up the broadcast from so far away. Hearing that solemn voice speak those words I didn't understand but felt so important.
Always having another family round on Christmas Eve to eat the Christmas meal with us. Afterwards we'd perform a Christmas play for them, either Papa Panov's Special Christmas or Star Boys (I was always the star twirler though I wanted to be the knight or the King of the Moors).
The Watchnight Service at church and the feeling of sheer excitement when it finished and realising it was finally Christmas Day.

Putting the Christmas tree up on Christmas eve, never before!
Always getting an apple and a clementine in my stocking.
Going for a walk around the neighbourhood to see the Christmas trees in the windows.
Getting a selection box (chocolate was a very rare treat).
Singing Christmas carols by candle light, gathered round our little nativity scene.

I remembered another. We used to spend Christmas at my granny's and she lived in a nice village where a brass band would go round on Christmas Eve and play. Standing on her doorstep listening to the music was wonderful. Sometimes it would snow and it felt like magic.

And I know this might not be popular and I do agree but it is a memory from another time. On Boxing Day we used to go and see the hunt off. All the horses and the riders in their smart red jackets with the dogs at their heels. It was very special.

Ceiling decorations which nade the house look like a pub

Mum always eating dates and my dad calling them camel shit

Babycham and Snowballs

Chocolate lig which mum made and also a Christmas cake with teethbreaking royal icing

Dairy Diary she got me every year. Loved filling it in.

Oh loads!

Putting as much garland on the tree as possible, all different colours
Ceiling decorations
Christmas music playing in the shops
Nativity plays
Watching scrooge
Although as i got to a teen, my memories were my mum and stepdad arguing every christmas eve, my mum feeling guilty and letting us open a present early. A general feeling of awkwardness and unease

@Strokethefurrywall
Agree, I have seen some lovely ones in my local garden centre though. I think the old more traditional advent calendars are still around but you have to look. I loved how Christmas Day was double doors.
I brought a lovely advent xmas card for my mil one year. I said to her the following year oh you can get the card out I-sent you again. Turns out she’d binned it as she thought she could only use it for one year where do you begin with answering that one !

I’ve already commented earlier on but reading this has rekindled some lovely memories.

Tinsel everywhere
Bring allerd a Snowball drink.
Ceiling decs - I may do some this year
“Proper” nativity scene advent calendars, loaded with glitter.

Making coloured paper chains in class. Having them hanging in big loops across the classroom. I made a little candle holder with holly in a small foil dish, I loved that thing! (Can't think why I was so attached to it looking back...) It was so nice to make festive things. And also, the time between Christmases was definitely longer than a year

Seeing Christmas trees start appearing in houses in the front windows.

Sitting curled up in an armchair staring at our Christmas tree until I was in a trace-like state. All those sparkles... It was 7 feet 2 inches, white and silver, and looked the best tree ever. My mum bought the best tree she could find, as our dad was in hospital and she wanted to treat us. It was £2 3s 2d from Woolworth's. (It's still in our loft, even DH can't bring himself to dump it!)

Doing crafts, like making present tags, from old Christmas cards. I remember cutting out a picture of a girl looking out a bus window with pinking shears and using a hole punch in the corner. I can still see it so vividly after 35 years...

The decorations that used to hang from the ceiling over our assembly hall. I thought they were magical.

Getting a turn at opening a door on the advent calendar, genuinely a little excited at what the picture was going to be.

Our elderly neighbour always used to give us each a box of Thornton's toffees for Christmas. He was a lovely, kindly man and we adored and trusted him.

Making paperchains and Christmas crackers in class. Rehearsing the Christmas play, where I would nearly always be the narrator. Seeing my dad bring down the Christmas tree and sack of decorations down from the loft. My mum putting up the Christmas card I made when I was 4 of a snowman at night.

Going to see Father Christmas in a department store. Travelling up to dgm's house in the car and wearing Christmas santa hats.

I also remember having satsumas every Christmas and overindulging on them and getting overexcited. Cue a child vomiting on Christmas Eve.

Waking up on Christmas Day to find a present on my bed. Although one year, I got 2 and opened them at 2.30am. My mum came into dgm's guest room to find me asleep and both presents opened. I was woken up and taken to see the rest of my presents in the living room.

Also Christmas afternoon walks on the beach with our dog as dgm lived in a seaside town.

I miss getting the Radio and TV Times and working out what you wanted to watch.

DJ I still do that! Well, only with the Radio Times. Every year without fail!!