Just like Michael Caine being visited by the ghosts of Christmas past in the greatest Christmas film ever; The Muppet Christmas Carol, I’ve been looking back.
Unlike Scrooge, I’m not an odious misanthrope in need of salvation so it’s not as painful a journey.
The ones with an early start:
There was no waiting for Christmas Day for me and my sister. The main bulk of our presents would be downstairs, but each year we left a stocking at the end of our beds for Santa to fill.
When I say “stocking,” I mean a stretchy knee-length football sock allowing maximum room for presents. And when I say “Santa,” I mean our parents.
I don’t recall when the realisation about Santa came but it was fairly early. The sound of my parents moving presents from their hiding place on Christmas Eve was hard to miss.
A parent would sneak into our rooms to remove the sock and come back in a few minutes later with it fully stuffed.
We’d wait for them to go to bed and the sound of snoring parents was the signal for our own sneaking. Getting together in one of our rooms we would empty our goodies by torchlight and whispers.
Having finally gotten some sleep the image that stands out the next morning is of our sofa. One half my presents, the other half my sisters.’
Best present was the Lego spaceship. Though my joy was tempered by the fact I wasn’t trusted to put it together.
My dad spent Christmas morning building it for me while I looked on enviously. Once built I was under strict instructions not to break it apart. Just what every seven year old with a Lego set wants to hear.
Christmas afternoon TV offered scheduling set in stone. On BBC1, an hour long Top Of The Pops recapped the year, ending with the Christmas #1. From there a left turn into The Queen’s Speech (now ‘King’s’) which still takes over both BBC1 and ITV at 3pm.
It’s like a round robin on a grand scale as His / Her Majesty gets 10 minutes to tell us about their year and hopes for the future, rounded off with the national anthem.
As a child it was by far the dullest 10 minutes of the day. Now I just ignore it.
The reward for getting through your patriotic duty was the Big Family Movie Premiere on BBC1. In my ’80s childhood this still meant something. VCRs were commonplace but my family were late adopters and the multi-channel revolution was yet to take place. Unless we’d seen a film at the cinema it was a matter of waiting for one of the four TV channels to show it.
As a mind-blowing reminder of how it used to be, it took from its cinema release in 1982 until Christmas Day 1990 for E.T. to make its TV debut.
Meanwhile on ITV: they traditionally followed the Queen with another British icon in the form of a James Bond film.
In 1990 this meant the 11 year old Moonraker. Nothing says festivity like a cold blooded killer with a misogynist streak. Perhaps Bond needs the Scrooge treatment.
Not that we were watching. Every Christmas Day we went to my Nana and Grandad’s along with all my dad’s family for a Christmas tea. A heaving table full of sandwiches, cakes, crisps, sausage rolls, trifle and much much more. There was an annual ritual in that my Nana would announce tea was served by 4PM, only two or three hours after we’d finished our Christmas Dinner.
Each year my mum would complain that it was too soon. And each year me, my sister and cousins would prove it was never too early, as we set about ploughing through our own body weight in food for the second time that day.
New Year’s Eve was just as special. That was another trip to Nana and Grandads’. They lived on a farm where Grandad was a dairyman, a great playground as a kid. There were four houses for the farm workers, at New Year the families would gather, starting at my grandparents and over the course of the night making their way through each house in turn.
When we were small me, my sister and cousins would be sent upstairs, packed together in a double bed having our own party. We’d get up in the morning picking our way through the bodies of extended family members sleeping it off all over the house
By the time I was eight we were allowed to stay up with the grown ups. Listening to the conversations and myriad stories, trying all sorts of drinks and staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning was an illicit thrill, seeing into the grown up world that was normally kept from us. If you’re thinking this sounds very irresponsible, they were only small measures to taste: we never got drunk. It was a night to come together and was about enjoying the warmth of being with family and friends.
Older – not necessarily wiser:
By the time I was into my 20s I still had the anticipation of Christmas being a special day. Only without the payoff.
Sure, it was nice, but there wasn’t the same thrill of opening a Lego spaceship.
New Year was a bigger focus.
Whenever I could I’d spent it back at home so I could meet up with old schoolfriends doing the same pub crawl in the same order that we’d been doing since before we were legally allowed to go drinking.
The only difference was the pubs stayed open longer. And after midnight, it was back to my friend’s house as his parents held an open house with food and more drink. Just like at my grandparents, it would end with a number of us sleeping on sofas or on the floor. His parents were very welcoming. So much so that the first time he spent New Year away with his girlfriend, he called home after midnight to wish his parents a happy new year. To be greeted with the surprise that we weren’t going to let his absence ruin the new year tradition and we’d all turned up regardless. Judging by the food laid on his parents were expecting us even if my friend wasn’t.
For Millennium New Year we decided we should do something special. In that we did exactly the same pub crawl but to mark midnight we pooled our funds in advance to purchase one single expensive firework and a bottle of champagne.
Five minutes to midnight we left the pub, assembled on the aptly named Rocket Hill, popped the cork and sent our own rocket soaring into the sky. Turns out it doesn’t matter how much it cost, one lonely rocket doesn’t make much of a display.
Not that we were concerned, we found the anti-climax hilarious. Plus, lowering our heads back down to earth, we found one of our group down on one knee proposing to his girlfriend – she said yes.
New Year in a strange town:
Having left home and moved to Leeds, the first time work commitments interrupted the usual holiday season itinerary proved memorable. Working until early evening on New Year’s Eve I went straight out from work, meeting up with Chris. You may remember him as the unreliable co-pilot in my European and US adventures.
He was Leeds born and bred and had arranged to meet up with some of his old school friends. Ones I’d never met.
The evening progressed in fine style through a series of pubs until the point Chris disappeared. He sometimes suffered from an inability to hold his liquor.
Having gone too hard too early he vanished without trace hours before the chimes of midnight. That left me with his schoolfriends. Not a problem; we were getting on fine and they invited me back to one of their parents’ for a house party.
So it was that my first new year in Leeds was spent in a house full of strangers, explaining to parents, neighbours and everyone else the degrees of separation that had led me there. They were very hospitable, made me feel welcome, supplied me with a constant stream of alcohol and food. I’ve never seen any of them again, and wouldn’t know where the house was. I like to think that each new year they still remember the random stranger they hosted, and ask themselves who he was.
The best and worst Christmas ever:
I wrote previously about my year travelling the world. From November through to January I was in eSwatini volunteering on conservation projects in their national parks.
In the run up to Christmas we got a few days off and four of us went on safari to Kruger National Park in South Africa.
We saw all kinds of wildlife up close but the lions eluded us. We heard them every night, their roars carried for miles but the closest we got to seeing them was coming across a Giraffe they had killed. After several days festering in the sun its partially eaten carcass was now giving off a pungent aroma.
The best time to see the wildlife active is dawn or dusk. The gates to the campsite were opened at 4am to let the people out of their captivity. Christmas morning we got up at 3:30am to pack up our stuff, ready for the gates opening for one last drive through the park before we headed back to eSwatini. I’d never gotten up that early even as an excitable child.
As we made our way to the park exit (to put this in context Kruger Park is roughly the size of Massachusetts) the perfect Christmas gift arrived. A whole pride of lions, cubs and all, brought us to a stop crossing the road in front of us.
It couldn’t get any better than that. We drove back to eSwatini and the backpacker hostel we used as a base. I queued for the solitary payphone to call my parents, eager to tell them everything I’d seen. I didn’t get to say any of it. Instead I was met with the news my Grandma was seriously ill and had days to live.
In honour of Christmas Day the hostel spent 24 hours spit roasting a warthog (sorry Pumbaa – tasted like pork). It was full of travellers finding a unique place to spend Christmas. Dinner was served al fresco, I sat in the sweltering heat, the excitement of a Christmas like no other replaced by the loneliness of being adrift in a crowd of strangers reveling in the festivities.
The highs and lows of life encapsulated in one extreme day.
I met my wife a month after I came home from travelling and became a father in 2011.
Its a very different experience for the three of us from how my own childhood was.
My daughter loves to hear our stories, and although I wish she could have experienced those Christmas and New Year’s at the farm, we’ve created plenty of our own magic and memories that will be hers to pass down.
Anyone have any memorable Christmas / New Year experiences to share?
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A great variety bundle of memories and feelings, JJ.
Last Christmas was memorable, in that it was the first I spent in Japan. When I studied abroad, I came home for Christmas, and when I was in grad school my then-fiancee would always come to the US for winter break.
So I finally got to partake in the “American Christmas” custom of Japan: eating fried chicken.
We didn’t follow the second half of that custom: check into a love hotel. Because those celebrations work in a normal hotel too!
…
I think my daughter would love it if we said we were having fried chicken for Christmas Dinner.
Is there a reason behind the custom?
My guess is effective marketing by KFC.
Ok, too funny, i just had a flashback to some Christmas’ as a kid where we would drive up on Christmas Day for whatever reason. It was a 6 hour ride, so we’d usually stop for lunch halfway. In this particular halfway town, they had a KFC, and it was the only thing open besides the gas station on Christmas. We had no KFC’s near where we lived, so it was a Big Deal for me that we were getting KFC.
I didn’t even care so much about the chicken, I wanted the biscuits and mashed potatoes. Christmas lunch!! Japanese would approve of that Christmas memory, I’m sure. 🙃
I love how JJ compartmentalized the childhood memories versus the pub crawls. It’s true that the holiday season experience changes, depending on your age and life circumstances.
An early memory for me is the year that I came downstairs and had my excitement dashed, as I saw that something was missing from under the tree. I was disappointed, but I said to my parents, “Santa must not have had enough to give out. Maybe another boy got one instead.”
My father said “well, that might be. Why don’t you come and get a glass of apple juice?” We walked into the kitchen, and on the floor was a knock-off version of the Lionel train set that I had been asking for since last summer. To this day, maybe my favorite toy when I was a young kid.
In a random conversation 40 Christmases later, my father recalled that particular Christmas, and how although it took him the better part of the following year to pay for the family’s gifts, he “would do it all over again.“
I’m not a fan of long-term debt. But I’ll side with him on this one. It was a Dad thing to do.
Aww, that’s awesome, mt.
My train set I got for Christmas was the year the Santa thing was cold busted, as oh-so-astute me as a 7 year old or 6 or whatever took one look at the directions Santa had written out for me to operate the train, and was like – daaaaaadddd, this is your writing!
By FAR our most memorable Christmas was that of 2001. We had a daughter 5, a daughter 3, and a daughter 1. We had a lot to prepare as “Santas” the night before, and additionally after presents we were going to hop in the car for a 10 hour drive to the Grandparents. The present wrapping (and assembly of a bicycle) and packing of luggage kept us up till 3am.
Just before 6am, our 5 year old burst into our room excitedly to explain that she had opened up EVERY SINGLE PRESENT and separated them by who they belonged to. This is definitely one of my parenting moments that I am least proud of, but I was furious. In my defense:
I don’t think I spanked her, but I did give her a severe verbal chastisement, which of course made her cry. (As if you could reason with a Christmas-crazed 5 year old on that morning of mornings.) We decided to re-wrap all of the presents for her sisters so they could open their own. I wish I would have just laughed the whole thing off, but I was so tired and sad that my order was tampered with. *sigh* When I suddenly launch into “My Way” on my death bed and sing the line “Regrets? I’ve had a few…” that will be one of them.
But it was in the end a good Christmas and a successful trip to the Grandparents and it left us with memorable story to tell.
Great story! Her heart was in the right place and I’m sure you made it up to her.
I can totally understand your reaction, both in the moment and holding onto the regret afterwards.
Our biggest fail was when my daughter was 2 and we went to my dad’s for Christmas – a 2.5 hour drive. We went Christmas eve so were very organised, brought down the bag of presents from the loft to the top of the stairs so daughter wouldn’t see them while we got her strapped into the car. Went back into the house and picked up the bags from the bottom of the stairs……..
Emptying the car at my dad’s was the realisation that her sack of presents was still at the top of the stairs. That was a horrible feeling. Cue a desperate trip to the shops on Christmas eve afternoon to see what we could find so she had stuff to open Christmas morning. In a way it worked out well for her, she still didnt quite get the concept of Santa at that stage, got two lots of presents from us and still doesn’t know about it. I’m 99.99% sure she doesn’t read her dad’s ramblings on here so think the secret is safe here.
For some reason, the most memorable my present was Six Finger. I have no idea why it’s always the first present I think about. I was probably 5 or 6, and the advertising did its trick. I asked for it and got it. What a ridiculous toy. It’s a good thing I didn’t shoot my eye out.
https://youtu.be/ElVzs0lEULs
Fantastic advert. Is the delivery of those lines an early precursor to rap?
I don’t know, but I like to think this 19th century Japanese banana merchant pitch is one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvF_z3HGNh0
We are close to the same age, but I have absolutely no memory of this. Good thing, really. I probably would have wanted one, and the results would not have been good.
I don’t see my old comment to this effect but I really, really dislike Madonna’s take on “Santa Baby”.
I loved reading this JJ, well done my friend.
Christmas as a kid meant a trip to dad’s folks in North Central PA. They were in the Lake Effect Snow zone, so there was always at least a foot of snow at Christmas. I only remember one year where it was barren, and we were quite annoyed, lol.
Dad was 1 of 6, and just about everyone would come for at least a few days. The fun over the years was figuring out where everybody was going to sleep, trying to cram 20+ people into a modest home. And we all knew, no matter what, my one cousin always got the floor next to the central propane heater, he was like a cat in that sense.
Grandma claimed she got the kitchen remodeled when I was around 10 years old because she wanted a kitchen large enough where everyone could sit together at holidays. And we always made it work, and those meals are easily some of my childhood Christmas memory highlights. Very grateful to have been able to experience that kind of communal togetherness in a big group setting like that.
Grandma spoiled us too. Some cousins hated turkey, so Grandma always had ham available as well as turkey. And how’s this for a bonkers family trait – Grandma and all 6 kids hated cheese. Grandpa was just like – whatever, more for me. But of course some grandkids and all inlaws eat cheese, like normal people do, lol, so there were both cheese and cheese less side options.
Lots of epic sled runs were had on the pipelines on the mountain behind the house. Everyone in her town owned a snowmobile it seemed like, and the snowmobiles would do a sweet job of packing the snow. So while it might take 10 minutes to trudge up a pipeline cut with a sled, it was so worth it to have that nice long run down the hillside.
It’s been nice to reflect on those times writing this response. I appreciate the opportunity JJ, excellent topic. 🙂
Thanks for sharing Dutch, love your memories. I’m the other way round in terms of snow, we usually get a couple of decent snowfalls each winter but I don’t remember a single white Christmas from my childhood just one where it snowed in the days after.
There’s been a few since I grew up. Think the first Christmas after we’d bought this house so pre-marriage and daughter turning up we got up Christmas Eve to a big snowfall. Work decided it wasn’t worth going in but it also meant we couldn’t get to whichever of our parents we were meant to be spending Christmas with. Cue a trudge through the snow to the shops to find some food to get us through Christmas Day.
There’s a couple of New Year’s in my single, drinking days where it snowed. Didn’t stop me going out but it did mean a three mile walk home in the snow along country roads. Without a coat obviously as where I grew up a temperature below zero wasn’t quite harsh enough to warrant wrapping up warm. The alcohol stopped me feeling the cold.
I’m not sure how I came to the conclusion that Santa was not real, but it was embedded by the time I was in second grade. That December, I grabbed my brother (4 yrs old) and we hid behind the sofa in the living room to watch and wait for whomever brought us presents.
I’m not sure how long we waited, but my parents’ bedroom opened (theirs was downstairs, next to the bedroom) and the hall light came on…at which point my brother sneezed.
I beat the crap out of my brother for giving us away, parents dropped the wrapped presents to pull me off of him.
After my beating, I sat at the window and watched the house behind ours, which had a chimney. I didn’t sleep that night, and proudly announced at breakfast there was no Santa.
Two years later, my parents were divorced and I received no Christmas presents, save for the board game “Tilt”, which I shared with my brother.
Karma.