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?

mickhucknall We had those glasses too, and also a set with racehorses on.

My two grandmothers (both died a few years ago) coming for Christmas and getting on so well together. When one became too infirm to travel, she said how much she missed the other one at Christmas.

mickhucknall those glasses look lovely and festive, PC or not!

So many...
Mum and dad decorating our tiny house with foil gaudy decorations
The gorgeous lantern xmas lights on the tree 🎄....ive seen some on eBay for £££££ 😔
Our old neighbour coming round for a snowball on Xmas morning
Going to my aunties house on boxing day
My children's school still have the cardboard chimney postbox 😁
Happy times

I was born in the mid 1940s and Christmases seem to have changed a lot over the years.

I can still remember waking as a child on Christmas morning and feeling with my toes the heavy weight of a pillowcase full of presents at the bottom of my bed and my sister and I dragging our hauls into our parents bedroom at an ungodly early hour and the bed being strewn with wrapping paper that we had ripped off of our pressies.

After breakfast Mum's five brothers and sisters and their wives/ husbands/children (15 cousins) and grandparents would either descend on our house or we would go to one of theirs, where we would spend the next three days together celebrating. We would play lots of different games, charades, cards, drink Babycham, play music, dance, the women cooked Christmas lunch for the children and men and then the men cooked for the women. Most other meals were help yourself when you felt like it. There was a lot of laughter especially at bedtime when all the visitors would sleep on mattresses strewn in all the rooms of the house and each family bought their own bedding.

These days I spend Christmas Day alone, much to the horror of my friends from whom I have a standing invitation but it is entirely my choice and I enjoy good food and drink and have a very relaxing day.

It's one thing remembering all the lovely times when we were little, but
this thread has made me realise that I spent far too much time trying to make everything perfect for my 2 DC when they were young.

We did have lots of traditions when they were small, and they'll say they loved it, but for me it was hard work. If only I'd relaxed more instead of running myself into the ground, feeding one set of relations then clearing up to get ready for the next lot. It took a downsize to a smaller house and unfortunately, the passing of the older generation to finally get the Christmas I really wanted - just our family.

Little did I know I would be getting 2 amazing DGCs to do it all over again with. I'm going to make sure that these unsophisticated traditions lovingly remembered in this thread will be the most important thing. M&S food can take care of the rest.

SilverySurfer I bet your Christmases were brilliant. I hope you have lovely photos of those times?

You all have me browsing ebay for foil ceiling decorations

They were good times StayAChild but no photos alas as many years ago I had a fire in my home which destroyed a lot of things, including all my photographs but thankfully still have my memories

Hope you have a wonderful Christmas with your family.

lucysmam, Iast year, I know Home Bargains were selling them.

Tangerines wrapped in paper, sleeping 4 to a room at my aunt's, snowballs ( the drink) even for the kids.

I am going to be wrapping tangerines in tissue paper this year! You have all inspired me

Lovely thread OP 🌲

My favourite things were

Opening my advent calendar - old school one with pictures not chocolates. It's an angel with a blue and pink dress given to me by my godmother when I was 2. I still have this and put it up every year, I'm 47 so she's an old lady now 😁

The Christmas decorations.
Crepe paper chains we carefully rolled back up each year and you made them twist by pulling them out from the centre each year.

The glorious glossy plastic hanging decorations at each corner of the living room.

The Christmas lights my mum carefully wound back into their original box each year and replaced bulbs when necessary.
The fairy for the top if the tree made by my dad and mum from one of my little dolls (homemade acetate wings by dad and cloths made by mum).

We had one of my dad's socks for a stocking with an apple, tangerine some chocolates and nuts in it and a single present from Santa.

All the presents under the tree, we got one each from mum and dad, one from each grandmas a couple of more presents from aunties and uncles also an annual and joy of joys a selection box. We hardly ever had sweets so Christmas was a joy to a sweet loving child 😁

The Christmas my dad made me a dolls house perfectly to scale for my pippa dolls (I luvs it still and have it in my house).

As pp have said the Christmas food, dates, jellied fruit, nuts with nutcrackers.

We also had the Christmas album that started with 'I saw three ships'

Finally, watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Albert Finney musical Scrooge on TV, both always seemed to be on at Christmas.

This thread is lovely! Although my eyes have been full of tears while reading it.

I remember the foil decorations (we still have some, they go up every year!).

The smell of the real Christmas tree that me and my dad made my mum put up with every year. She would have much preferred an artificial one but we were having none of it.

The sort of musty/pine-needly smell of the Christmas decorations when dad got them out of the loft and opened the boxes. That smell takes me back in an instant.

I decorated the tree every year after dad had put the lights on and even though I left home 10 years ago I still go back and decorate their tree and dad still puts the lights on first.

Having my mum's parents to stay, and my dad's mum, from Christmas Eve to New Years Day. They are all sadly no longer with us but I loved waking up knowing we had a house full of lovely people.

The bowl full of nuts in the lounge with the ancient silver nutcracker. My dad still has this every year and has endless patience showing DS1 how to do it.

Waking up in the night and knowing Father Christmas had been. I never opened my presents until the morning, I always went back to sleep full of excitement.

My mum reading The Night Before Christmas to me before bed. I do this with DS1 now.

More recently, going to midnight mass with them - last year I took the DC as well and DS1 loved sitting in between his grandparents. I hope we will be able to continue this tradition for many years yet.

To the PP who mentioned whisky in tea - my dad did this every year but I was about 17 the first time I got whisky in my tea - he brought me tea in bed and I took a huge gulp - it nearly blew my head off! He's not one for small measures...

We only had family Christmases for my first decade, but those were great. I remember Christmas mornings at home and a great family meal. I don't recall any lead up or extras. It was simple.

I've just remembered my mum making mince pies every Christmas Eve afternoon to Carols From Kings on the radio. I do something similar now.

It really is the small things. I've tried to keep it simple for DS and the only thing I've lost the fight on is advent calendars (I wish he could appreciate the picture ones because I loved them but we have a wooden one instead which he loves). And I think the main difference is that these days we tend to have nice food all year round so it feels less ceremonious when all the Christmas food starts to appear.

I've just ordered a picture advent calendar from ebay for £2.25 if anyone else is searching. I think my girls will enjoy opening it up with their chocolate ones :)

Ah thanks @lucysmam I'm going to have a look now! For myself though as well as for my DC!

We knew it was Xmas when I was a child because:
The shops windows would be decorated with tinsel and lit with fairy lights
School would start rehearsals for the Xmas play and everyone had a part
You'd be offered mince pies and quality street when you went visiting family and friends
Clementines, nuts and dates would start appearing at the greengrocers
People would make arrangements to collect their Xmas hamper from the newsagent who did the year long saving scheme
The factory where mum worked would have a Xmas party god the employees children
You'd get the Xmas decorations from the attic and there would always be a few broken despite being perfect when stored
You'd spend whole afternoons at primary school making Xmas cards
You'd count up your pennies to buy Xmas presents for your dps and gdps
On Xmas day you would watch TOTPs followed by the big Xmas movie
You'd be allowed half a glass of something mildly alcoholic which would send you to sleep

I remember getting Mum and Dad to tell stories about their Xmases.

Mum used to say "You know mine, you have it too". She was right. In the town we both grew up in on Xmas morning Santa would drive up and down the streets in a fire engine with the firemen handing out bags with nuts, candy, and an orange, a tradition started when her dad was fire chief. We all remember, after presents were opened, listening for the faint sound of the siren and running out of the house and jumping up and down until we saw the fire engine round the corner. Mum did it in the 30s, DB and I in the 60s, and DS1 in the early 80s and the town still does it to this day. DS2 never got to experience it as we moved before he was born. And he never lets us forget how he was cheated.

My dad would always tell of how in the morning they would find their stockings at the end of the bed (Dad's folks were from Cornwall). He always chuckled at the fact that one of the 'treats' was a beautiful juicy orange, because he was raised on a citrus ranch with oranges aplenty. He also used to reminisce about his mother's Christmas pudding. I'd always wanted to try making one but he had no idea of the recipe other than that it had dried fruit and brandy in it and they lit it on fire. I was never brave enough to try since steamed puddings were something that were out of my realm of cookery experience.

I had shit Christmases as a child. Abusive, angry father who would go out just as present opening starred. Every year. And a self-absorbed mother who sucked the light out of everything.
The first time I spent Christmas apart from them was at my lovely in laws the year I got married. It was simply lovely. Lights, nice smells, my mother in law bustling in the kitchen making delicious things while I peeled veg and drank Bailey's and listened to carols on the radio. I went to bed that night and cried with happiness.
Now I have kids I strive to give them what I never had but I also try to keep it simple and stress free. My mother in law is still here helping to make it lovely! She made my kids an advent calender where you pull out a little wooden ornament and hang it on the tree each day.
Every year I get excited and we love to drive round and laugh at some of the crazy lights.

This is a lovely thread.
When I think about my family Christmas when I was a child in the 80s it was full of massive foil decorations on the ceiling with me, Dad and my younger brother seeing how many we could put up before mum said it's a bit ostentatious!
The side board covered with dates, those jelly orange and lemon sweet things, and nuts in a big bowl that Dad would crack with a metal nut cracker.
The massive long socks we had to put out for Santa (I'm not sure where mum got them) and that amazing feel when you stretched out in the morning and felt the weight of the full (sock) stocking.
Getting up crazily early and running into mum and dads room with the full stocking to show them what Santa had brought us.
Me and my brother laying under the Xmas tree gazing up at lights and decorations.
I just realise how lucky I was that mum and dad really gave us such happy fun times through lovely traditions.

The rose and the slipper film with Richards chamberlain loved it sooo much still do, inspite of having it on repeat dd1 never took to it, will have to try with dd2.

The fire, things hanging from ceilings, I'm a big believer in this now, creates grotto effect, other worldly effect one needs in Xmas, shiny stuff floating from ceiling with fire on... Piles of fruit and nuts, candles.... Displays... Pineapples. The radio Times
Blue Peter...

Oh and without doubt the coloured lights, jewel lights we had, and the decorations

So lovely reading everyone's family traditions.

Mine are

Pillowcase for stocking

Tangerine and chocolate coins in the bottom of the stocking

Foil decorations and paperchains hanging from the ceiling

Opening stocking in the morning and main presents after dinner

Boxing Day with the whole family- aunts, uncles, cousins etc at my nan's house

Icy cold winters and warming our pajamas infront of the fire before putting them on

My mum blasting out her Christmas tape on the first of December and then everyday after until the big day itself