It's funny, or at least I conjecture that it might be just a little weird, that in completely abandonning Christmas this year, no giving, no receiving, no turkey roasts, no tree, no enforced bonhomie, I find myself thinking about Christmas. Perhaps I have become, or am starting to become, dear old Ebenezer who, so far, has been restricted to Marley.
I wrote something yesterday which prompted an attempt to return to my childhood and the magic which surrounds a young child on Christmas morning; it is difficult, my childhood is far removed in time. Being a working class oik, well aquainted with poverty, or at least a semblance of poverty, Christmas morning, before breakfast, was the time for opening presents; not for us the long wait until after lunch so beloved of the upper class and middle class wannabes.
I never, as far as I can remember, waited up for Santa to arrive. As far as I remember, I never believed in Santa Claus; I always knew that it was my parents and that the man sporting a long, white beard and a red coat in Gammidges, a toy store to rival Hamley's which is sadly long gone, was a mere imposter. Nonetheless, I would always wake up around 4.00am with an air of excited anticipation. To open the presents under the tree, which always stretched from the floor to the ceiling of our little terraced house's 'front room', we didn't call them lounges or living rooms then, was forbidden but there was always a thick, wooly sock at the foot of the bed or hanging from a hook on the door which was filled with little treats. Some nuts, although nothing with which to break the hard shells, a couple of tangerines or clementines, a once a year treat at Christmas and perhaps a small bag of sweets; 'dolly mixtures', a 'sherbet dab' with its liquorice 'wand', four ounces of pear drops from the jar, almost as big as myself, in the local newsagent wrapped in a white paper bag.
These kept me going as I waited for the inevitable ascent of the creaking stairs by one, or both, of my parents from their bedroom on the ground floor. My parents had retained the quaint notion of a parlour, which was next to my bedroon on the upper floor. This led onto the kitchen, although it could scarcely be called a kitchen; a room not four feet wide and ten feet long. I would wait for the whistling of the kettle for that morning's first cup of tea before I dared venture out, out through the door of my bedroom. I would gaze longingly at the crates of soft drinks, limeade, orangeade, cherryade, lemonade which were stored outside my bedroom door in an unknowingly sadistic fashion and which I was forbidden to even think about consuming until Christmas afternoon and I would make my way into the parlour.
"Can I open my presents now?"
These were the days before blanket TV advertising when parents could only be guided by their own intuition; the child's wishes were not a part of the equation because we had no expectations. We did not know of 'Cabbage Patch Dolls', 'Action Man', 'the Johnny Five multi-purpose gun which fired 'rockets', the Nintendo Wii. So, every present was always a surprise!
My earliest memory of Christmas morning is walking into the room, I must have been three or perhaps four, and finding the largest present I could have imagined sitting by the side of the tree; it was too large to go under it. I knew that it wasn't a bicycle as my mother had forbidden my father to buy one, a routine she has maintained to this day (!), too dangerous she said, but it was of similar size; all wrapped in sheet upon sheet of Christmas wrapping paper. It was a rocking horse! That, together with a plastic breastplate, helmet with visor, a plastic sword and an old broom handle for a lance provided much amusement in the ensuing years; I even went as far as fitting a old twill cotton sheet, with appropriate holes for the head and the tail, to serve as a carparison, although I did not have the skill at that age to make actual barding (look it up!). It is perhaps indicative that I should choose to play as a European knight rather then the ubiquitous American cowbow even after I had subsequently acquired chaps, a waistcoat, a hat and a six gun and holster.
Poverty is always relative but despite the fact that my childhood diet consisted mainly of spam and chips, egg and chips, bacon pudding and suet pudding with jam or treacle, our house was lit by a solitary coal fire and the toilet could only be reached through the garden, my parents never skimped on my Christmas presents; they were always the largest, and most expensive, of whatever I received. The Triang 'TT' guage railway set; the four-lane Scalextric motor racing set, the Meccano constuction set, the enormous box of Lego bricks, the largest Cadbury's Selection box with enough chocolate bars to last a fortnight but which were gone by Boxing Day.
There were rituals to perform; stuffing the capon, my father's only task on Christmas morning; being let out into the street mid-morning into an orgy of 'look what I got for Christmas' enjoyed by every child, save the poorest, in the road; the arrival mid-afternoon of uncles, aunts and cousins, there for tea with my Gran; the 'phut-phut-phut' as George's 1940's Ariel motorbike and sidecar turned the corner of our street; the hours spent by my cousins and I prising pint after pint of winkles, whelks and cockles from their shell with a pin for tea; George's home movies and getting sent out of the room to play in the parlour while the grown-ups watched Harrison Marks shorts.
It is symptomatic of every generation to look backwards with fond memories of Christmas past; the 'once in a lifetime' snog with one of your colleagues under the mistletoe at the office party; the shared smoked salmon, scrambled eggs and vintage Bollinger or Dom Perignon in the early hours of Christmas morning; arriving home to frosty glares, without the slightest memory of how you got there, after a 'skinful' with your colleagues on Christmas Eve and the subsequent and inevitable reconciliation over said Dom Perignon; making mulled wine at 8;00am for your neighbours; Midnight Mass in a Catholic Cathedral on Christmas Eve; curling up on the sofa at midnight to watch 'Casablanca' for the umpteenth time. As pleasant as these memories might be, they must surely pale beside the excited, little child, tearing off yard after yard of festive wrapping paper and gazing in wonder and joy at what 'Santa has brought you for Christmas'!
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