Advent Calendar Day 24

 As a small child I was asked what my name was and I promptly announced Mary Christmas.  I suspect an instance of misunderstanding because Mary is my middle name and being greeted with "Merry Christmas"

When my father was an employee with the Woolwich Building Society I was able to go to Christmas parties but we had to drive to the Head Office in Woolwich for them.  I am not sure what the rest of the family did whilst I was there as it would have been too far to drive home and back again.  One year I had a lovely pink dress with lace tulle netting over the skirt and a blue bow round my waist.

Our Advent Calendars were like those posted about on the first day of this Advent Calendar.

We had net Christmas stockings and one was edged with red crepe paper and the other with orange crepe paper.  My sister and I would swap which one we had each Christmas.  Our stockings were left on the end of our beds and held small inexpensive items like notebooks, colouring pencils, sweets, a comic, flannel with a picture on it and a satsuma in the toe.  The satsumas came wrapped in a white paper wrap similar to tissue paper.  There was a picture logo on the wrappers.  There were many of these logos and we used to collect them to see how many different ones we could find.

Satsuma wrappers

We had fun making paper chains from packs of coloured strips of paper with gum on one end.  We made miles of these things, or so it seemed.  They were pinned all the way round the wooden picture rails or else pinned from the corners in to the centre light.  Mum kept the other decorations in a box to come year after year.  Many of them were coloured folded paper shapes like bells and stars.

Christmas bell

We also made these from old cards and we use to "pink" the edges with Mum's pinking shears

Christmas tree bauble

The Christmas tree had the same decorations year after year, being carefully put away and stored after Christmas.  I am sure there were some additions some years when we had made things at school.  I still have one or two of the ornaments and decorations used by Mum and Dad.

Our presents from Santa were always those in the Christmas stockings and the presents from our family and friends were put under the Christmas tree for opening after breakfast.  In the afternoon small gifts appeared "magically" hanging on the tree and these were opened in the middle of the afternoon.  We dutifully wrote thankyou notes to the present givers who we didn't see over the Christmas holiday.  

Mum would be busy cooking before Christmas as she made her own Christmas cake, mince pies, sausage rolls, cake and other goodies and of course she always cooked the Christmas dinner.  One of the cakes we always had on the tea table was a Tunis cake.  Some years we were given it and other years she bought it.  It was a plain madeira cake with chocolate covering the outside. I remember it with a Christmas band around the outside. On the top would be a decoration of buttercream and little marzipan fruits in a butter cream nest in the middle.  Our Christmas cake was always decorated with a snow scene so that we could put the little decorations of robins, holly, Father Christmas, a sleigh and some fir trees.

Tunis Cake

Dad used to roast chestnuts on the open fire we had in a courtier stove in the living...pre central heating days.  Needless to say there were spitting chestnuts and bits flying around.

When we married we bought a little Christmas tree and some decorations and this was our angel that sat on the top of the tree and still does every year.  I am making and giving a Christmas decoration each year to each grandchild so that when they leave home they will have 18 of Granny's Christmas decorations for their own tree but I will leave them to choose their own angel.

Our Angel

At the beginning of our marriage our parents only lived a few miles from each other so we would come up to stay with one set of parents but always visited the other parents the next day.  We carried on this tradition even after my parents moved away but once the children came along we found it too much to move between both of them as my parents had moved away from Sussex.  We then alternated Christmas holidays with one set of parents and Easter long week end with the other set.  It was so much easier for the children not to be stuck in the car for 5 hours between the sets of parents.

Both sets of parents always had Christmas dinner at 1pm and tea in the evening so we naturally carried this on ourselves,  Peter's parents did not have Christmas tree presents and had their crackers at lunchtime whereas I had always had them at teatime.  We carried on the tree presents and chose to have the crackers at teatime too.

In my late teens I would join in with others from our church and take the handbells round to accompany the carol singing that we did each Christmas.  We used to collect money but my memory fails me as to whether it was for the church or charity.  One year we sang outside Una Stubs front door and she came to open the door.

Peter's Dad had always got tickets for the Pantomime in Southport on Boxing Day on the years we went to them for Christmas and the children were small.  Some big names took part in those pantomimes, including Les Dennis one year.  We always went to the matinee so the language was appropriate for them.  There was always a very nosiy and enthusiastic audience.  We all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

As a young Mum I belonged to the WI in our village on the outskirts of Cirencester.  I was the youngest member there and always interested in the family.  One year we went to Gloucester for a carol concert and another year my friend, who was also a member and a childminder, decided to be part of the entertainment at the Christmas party and also did the same thing at the local playgroup.  We had a paint chimney made of a large three sided cardboard box and my friend dressed as Santa and was standing in the chimney and I dressed in my nightie (covering over my clothes!!) and clutching a huge teddy that my daughter had won in a competition to name the teddy...she chose Hamish.  Even more embarassing , but the whole point, was we sang the words to "When Santa got stuck up the Chimney"  We just sang up to the first Achoo, achoo achoo and then repeated them as an encore because there were more words but we didn't like them.   It was all much enjoyed by both the WI and the playgroup children.

When our children were old enough we would go to the Midnight Service where they and I were in the choir and Peter and I kept that up until Christmas 2020 when covid altered everyone's lives and meeting in churches and groups of people were not allowed.  Christmas 2020 was also the first year it had just been Peter and I together from Christmas but we had learned to zoom each other and so had a "zoomed" Christmas Day meet up.  We still do this with our son and his family on Christmas Day because usually we are with my daughter and family either in our house or in their house in Hertfordshire.

Our last tradition and our newest was a result of Covid too.  Our street has an Advent Trail for the children to see as they go to school we are allocated a day in the trail and have to display it in the window.  We have lots of lights outside and decorate the front downstairs windows with suitable themed decorations and our day number.  Some how the number of lights seem to grow each year as Peter is very enthusiastic about them and itches to get them outside on December 1st!!!