May I take this opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I hope it is everything you wish it to be for you and yours. We are spending the day at home, my husband, me and my two daughters, my closest friends and their daughters plus my husband’s son and my daughters’ dad too. We shall be a jolly bunch - and even though it’ll be a bit of a squeeze around the dinner table, we won’t care, for isn’t that what Christmas is all about - mucking in and making do while sharing in the good cheer of the day?
My daughter Connie cooks the Christmas dinner these days and is excellent at it. Her sister and I help out, peeling veg and setting the table. My husband makes the prawn cocktails, our regular starter before the turkey and all its trimmings.
Beforehand we all have bucks fizz and blinis with smoked salmon. The sitting room smells of a mixture of pine from the Christmas tree, woodsmoke from the open fire and citrus from the clove oranges my daughters and I have mede several days before. I’m sharing a couple of images of our home at Christmas so you can get a feel for how it all looks. My piece this week is about the traditions of Christmas. I hope you enjoy it.
Christmas is built on traditions and to most of us, that means doing the same things, in the same way, every year. In my experience, any attempt to deviate from or change these is likely to cause a riot!
My mum was still making up stockings for my younger sister and I until I was around 30 and my sister 27. We were both living in our own places by then, but still went home for Christmas. Every time my mum suggested it was time to ditch the stockings, there would be howls of protest
“You can’t, they’re the best bit of Christmas!”
“But you’re grown-ups now”
“What’s that got to do with it? That doesn’t stop us wanting a stocking to open on Christmas morning!”
Once it got to the stage where the knickers and socks she bought us weren’t what we wore anymore and we each had more emery boards than we could use in a life-time, we reluctantly agreed it might be time to move on.
I have just been through the same scenario with my daughters. At 25 they both live in their own places but come home for Christmas and share a bed on Christmas Eve so they can open their stockings together in the morning, as they have always done.
It gets harder each year to think of things to put in the felt stockings they have had since they were tiny, but they plead that I keep this tradition going. This year, to be helpful, one of them sent me a couple of links with suggestions for stocking fillers she would appreciate. One was a lip gloss costing £16.99 and the other a hair scrunchie at £22.
“Good Lord, who pays £22 for a hair scrunchie?” I said to her sister
“Well, no-one probably – they all get someone else to buy it for them”
“And £16.99 for a lip gloss that can only be bought online? What’s wrong with Rimmel?”
We have also had the tree debate. I’ve always insisted on buying a fir rather than a spruce because, to me, the piney smell is synonymous with Christmas. But crikey, the clearing up of the needles is an annual task I hate. And they never really disappear do they? I am still finding pine needles stuck in the carpet in July. And of course, everyone wants to help me put the tree up and decorate it, but no-one wants to be there when I take it down.
This year I tentatively suggested getting a fake tree: I know this is tantamount to sacrilege but perhaps, I reason, it would all just be so much easier. Better still if it has built in lights, so you just get it out of the box and plug it in. but no, my girls just want us to keep the same tradition going like we’ve always done.
It reminds me of a similar situation with my mother when I was about ten years old. She said she was going to throw out some of my favourite Christmas decorations. We had hung them up every year since I was small, and I just couldn’t imagine Christmas without them. Right from the moment when my dad came climbing down from the loft with the battered cardboard boxes that held all the Christmas paraphernalia, until they were hanging in our dining room, I could barely contain my excitement. For to me, they seemed magic.
In the box they were just flattish pieces of cardboard with a mere glimpse of coloured paper sandwiched between. It was only when, while I held one end and my dad walked backwards with the other, they would open out like the folds of an accordion and miraculously multiply in length until they were long enough to hang as a multi-coloured paper garland from one corner of the room to another. Four of these met in the middle where two, fold-out paper bells were added.
It has to be said, they were not subtle, but their presence upgraded the dining room from the everyday place where we ate all our meals to feeling like a fiesta was just about to take place. I loved them. So I was devastated when, one year, my mother decided she didn’t want them put up any more.
“Oh no I exclaimed, but why?
“Oh darling they’re looking very tired and tattered and, let’s face it, they are a bit much”
I couldn’t see how anything could be too much at Christmas, but I understand now that my mum probably wanted to move towards decorations that were a bit more tasteful and a little less “in your face”.
One tradition I fear losing is the sending of Christmas cards. I love receiving cards and having them up around the house during the holiday season and send just as many as I always have. It has been a Christmas tradition in Britain since Victorian times, but when second-class post costs 75p per card and first class £1.25, many people just can’t afford to send them anymore. It seems to me that this is one tradition that, sadly, will die out soon as the younger generations wish to spend their money on other things.
Christmas cards, advent calendar and candles on the piano in our hall
One tradition that I hope will continue for many years to come is that of one of our local newsagents Meet & Deep. The shop where my girls and their friends would buy sweets and hang out after school is run by Shashi and Pallu Patel and their two sons, Meeten and Deepen (the shop is named after them). They are a huge asset to the community, checking in on vulnerable and elderly customers, raising money for good causes and generally spreading goodwill all year round
There is always a chalk board outside the shop and throughout the year they post messages to local residents inviting them to call in for a free bottle of water when temperatures are high or to step inside the shop at night when they are waiting for a bus in the dark. Sometimes there is just a smiley face and a message of good cheer.
On Christmas day they open their doors to homeless people or anyone in the area who is feeling lonely. In the past they have welcomed more than 200 people. The two sons dress up as elves while mum and dad are Mr and Mrs Christmas. They serve tea with mince pies and samosas, play Christmas music and share their philosophy of “We are all family” by offering a hug to anyone who wishes to join them. If only there were more people like them in the world. I hope this leaves you with a warm glow in the run-up to the festive season. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
I’d love to hear about your Christmas traditions. Please feel free to share with me and your fellow subscribers by clicking the button below and I shall respond
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I’m glad I could give you a laugh Debbie. It’s funny, I often write things and wonder if anyone will know what I’m talking about! It’s so pleasing when readers ‘get it’. Wow, 97? How impressive. Hope you all have a great time x
Wow Kay, you’re a woman of many talents! Good for you, making so many of the elements of Christmas yourself. It sounds like you really make the most of it all. Isn’t it lovely we can still get so enthused about Christmas regardless of how many times we’ve done it all before? Merry Christmas to you and yours.