What Was Your Favourite Thing About Christmas When You Were Young,

[onthebusesfan]

What Was Your Favourite Thing About Christmas When You Were Younger or growing up ?

Favourite present , memories, film, tv show etc.

[George 1978]

Re: What Was Your Favourite Thing About Christmas When You Were Young,

There are so many of them, and these are my choices:

1) Staying up on Christmas Eve and either seeing Midnight Mass or a film on the other side.

2) Christmas Day at around 6.00 am and waking up and finding presents around the bedroom - switch on the radio and it isn't Noddy Holder's 1973 hit, then it would be Jonah Lewie with Stop the Cavalry again. .

3) Seeing Father Christmas at the Coop department store (Upper Parliament Street, not Broadmarsh), probably on the Monday afternoon after we broke up (last saw him in around 1985). For some reason, I stopped believing in him back in 1987 when I found out after writing a list that he had exactly the same handwriting as my late mother, the forger!

4) Christmas parties at school and pupils bringing food in, and the school doing an internal "Royal Mail" Christmas card service (cue the girls sending the boys Christmas cards - hallelujah!).

5) Watching films on ITV with ad breaks full of "Sale starts 10 am Boxing Day" adverts.

6) Er…

7) That's it.

Of course, these days it's sipping Harveys Bristol Cream and eating After Eight mints at midnight while watching the Midnight Mass, and watching and toasting the Queen at 3.00 pm - back then, when the fourth week of December came around, didn't it feel that the whole world and life in general was so exciting back then for just a few days, and even boring things seemed to be interesting?

[Zincubus]

Re: What Was Your Favourite Thing About Christmas When You Were Young,

When I was about 8 I used to love watching that kids hospital ward opening Christmas presents on Christmas morning ..


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Richard1978]

Re: What Was Your Favourite Thing About Christmas When You Were Young,

Christmas party at school, especially if we could bring in a game from home & watch something in the school hall on TV. Back in 1982 watching an hour of videoed cartoons seemed amazing.

Helping my Mum put the decorations up.

Waiting 9 months for a present my parents wouldn't have bought for any other occasion apart from my Birthday in March.

The big films from 3 years earlier being on TV the first time.

Christmas specials of my favourite programmes.

Christmas dinner as my Mum almost never made roast turkey at any other time in the year.

[George 1978]

Re: What Was Your Favourite Thing About Christmas When You Were Young,

When I was about 8 I used to love watching that kids hospital ward opening Christmas presents on Christmas morning ..

I assume that they were ones that were hosted by Leslie Crowther or Jimmy Tarbuck - they were before my time, but I am certain that TV-am did something similar in the mid 1980s using Roland Rat.

[George 1978]

Re: What Was Your Favourite Thing About Christmas When You Were Young,

Christmas dinner as my Mum almost never made roast turkey at any other time in the year.

My family would have preferred chicken or even duck as they said that turkey was too dry - I have always been faithful to Bernard Matthews when it came to Christmas dinner.

[amethyst]

Re: What Was Your Favourite Thing About Christmas When You Were Young,

When I was about 8 I used to love watching that kids hospital ward opening Christmas presents on Christmas morning ..


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

I remember doing the same Leslie Crowther was the presenter

[Zincubus]

Re: What Was Your Favourite Thing About Christmas When You Were Young,

My family would have preferred chicken or even duck as they said that turkey was too dry - I have always been faithful to Bernard Matthews when it came to Christmas dinner.

We stopped buying his stuff after all those animal cruelty videos came to light ..

Never again ...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Zincubus]

Re: What Was Your Favourite Thing About Christmas When You Were Young,

I assume that they were ones that were hosted by Leslie Crowther or Jimmy Tarbuck - they were before my time, but I am certain that TV-am did something similar in the mid 1980s using Roland Rat.

Yep

Wish I knew what the program was called


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[amethyst]

Re: What Was Your Favourite Thing About Christmas When You Were Young,

Was it called Meet the kids?

[George 1978]

Re: What Was Your Favourite Thing About Christmas When You Were Young,

Yep

Wish I knew what the program was called

The ITV programme was called A Merry Morning, made by Yorkshire TV, and ran from 1969 to 1980.

[George 1978]

Re: What Was Your Favourite Thing About Christmas When You Were Young,

We stopped buying his stuff after all those animal cruelty videos came to light ..

Never again ...

They were Bootiful though.

[Zincubus]

What Was Your Favourite Thing About Christmas When You Were Young,

The ITV programme was called A Merry Morning, made by Yorkshire TV, and ran from 1969 to 1980.

Thank you !!


Edit

Sadly no sign of it on YouTube

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[George 1978]

Re: What Was Your Favourite Thing About Christmas When You Were Young,

Was it called Meet the kids?

That was the BBC version in the 1960s - Frankie Howerd, Ray "Lord Charles" Alan, and Leslie Crowther all hosted it over the years. In 1969 someone called Rolf Harris (sincere apologies for mentioning him) not only hosted it himself, but in the same year he also had the Christmas Number One in the charts - one has to say that the show's title does sound rather creepy in hindsight as a result.

[George 1978]

Re: What Was Your Favourite Thing About Christmas When You Were Young,

Thank you !!

Edit

Sadly no sign of it on YouTube

It would have been amazing for someone to have an off-air copy from the 1970s and put it onto YT - I believe that Yorkshire TV (now ITV plc) would almost certainly have it in their archive. However, the fact that it seemed to be live as the TV listings' synopsis indicates might not indicate that they were originally recorded - on the other hand, the 1978 edition was transmitted the following year due to a strike at the Leeds studios.

Another thing is that I am almost sure that I have seen a clip on one of those Channel 4 100 Greatest TV compilations with Leslie Crowther visiting a child with a bad cough and Crowther remarking: "you'd better give up smoking, then!" Those were the days when people could make ironic jokes like that...