Christmas memories
The Christmases of my childhood meant many things: the joy of school holidays, the innocent excitement of Santa’s arrival, the cinema, visiting cribs, the panto and snow. It always seemed to be snowing, which shows how selective the memory can be.
But, for me, it wasn’t all fun. We lived in a battered old farmhouse at the top of a long, winding, bockety lane and we kept a few chickens, a goose, a goat, two pigs and a donkey called Pedro. Now pigs had to be fed even on school holidays. Every day I had to tackle Pedro to an old cart, call to every house in the area, and collect the left-over food from the dinners. Although there was a certain standing as, chariot-like, I went about my business - in effect, I hated this daily chore while my pals played football.
We knew Christmas had arrived when the tree appeared in the front room. This was my father’s job to put in place and he always made me feel special by asking me to help him. It was nothing elaborate or flashy; just a plain tree he had chopped down, stuck in a bucket of sand and plonked in the corner but, to me, it was magical. Then the big red candle was symbolically placed in the window and lit by the youngest in the family. Christmas was on its way.
My mother usually went to the cinema on Sunday night while my father ‘looked after us.’ If any of us cried he just picked us up, put us out in the yard and locked the door until we stopped. It worked every time!
Another night, she returned to find my eldest brother playing inside the fireguard. My father explained sheepishly that, at least, he knew where the child was.
He gave me six pence every week. The cinema was three pence; Westerns were enjoyed with an animated passion and we rode imaginary horses, shooting imaginary Indians all the way home. Then, it was a bag of chips for tuppence and, finally, six rock-like toffees for the last penny.
My father was an extremely kind and sometimes frustrating man. One Christmas, I saved up for ages and bought him a heavy, woollen jumper. A few days later a local man, who was a little down on his luck, passed our house. I couldn’t help but notice that he was wearing my present! Like all youngsters, I thought my father would live forever and when he died, I cried for months.
Usually about a week before Christmas, the last day at school before the holidays was extra special. Lessons were forgotten as the whole school was assembled to sing Christmas carols. We finished up with a rousing rendition of ‘Silent Night’.
The excitement on Christmas morning was almost unbearable. Sleep was impossible. We woke at dawn and, anxious not to wake our parents, we quietly checked our stockings. Then it was early Mass and communion and, after breakfast, we all met at the bottom of the lane to compare presents. Looking back, they were fairly mundane; a toy gun or holster, simple games like Ludo or Snakes & Ladders, a rubber football, a comic annual or a cap-gun, which was great until the caps ran out. Similarly, the girls got colouring books, plastic tea sets or dolls.
One particular Christmas, I was delighted with a beautiful silver flashlamp. To my utter disappointment it had no batteries. One boy, an only child, received a bicycle. We were green with envy, but he allowed us to ride up and down the lane at a penny a time.
The highlight of the day was the Christmas dinner. It was always stuffed goose followed by potatoes in their jackets cooked over an open fire and roast apples dipped in brown sugar. It seemed to go on forever. This was all washed down with cool diluted raspberry.
As the day wore on, there was a never-ending stream of visitors: friends, neighbours, aunts, uncles and distant cousins. Few left before sampling the Christmas spirit. Others lingered on and weren’t slow in giving a blast of a song or two.
St. Stephen’s Day was another early start. Half a dozen of us wren boys met at an agreed spot and sang our way up one side of the lane and down the other. That was our patch. It was an unwritten rule. We never ventured further afield. Most houses gave us a few pence, probably to get rid of us. We disappeared to carefully count our loot. This was very important, because the amount decided whether we went to the local film for one of the posher cinemas in town. If the ‘takings’ were really good, we might even afford the luxury of ice cream or sweets on our way home.
After St. Stephen’s Day, the excitement petered out. We spent our time lying on the bed reading comics and listening to the radio, visiting other churches and comparing the different cribs, or we kept busy by building a big snowman in the nearby quarry.
Our pleasures were simple. How times have changed.