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

[beccabear67]

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

Remember one year, 1987, we stayed awake til around 1 ish, heard a noise coming from the roof, which sounded like Santa's sleigh stopping. We were so excited.

Turned out to be a chimney sweep with the wrong address?

Here it'd be either squirrels or a woodpecker we can't seem to scare off long...

We had some exposure to the Sinter Klaus and his now un-PC sidekick from the Netherlands side of the family. It was worth it to put up with all that for the stroopwaffels and speculas biscuits though!

[beccabear67]

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

This last year was our first without a real tree in the living room. However for the scent we did still bring in a few pine boughs.

I try to see at least a bit of the Queen's message because I know it will not be possible to have one at some point, or it'll be that bagpipe wrestler (Charles) or even his son. A family friend usually watches some of one of the midnight masses that get televised with a choir, and the rest of us are fine with that. It's going to be a very scaled back Chrimbo around here, but it's been going in that direction for awhile.

Does anyone else do the ricing of potatoes thing? We now have two of these vintage devices having inherited one. You put the boiled spud minus jacket into it and push a lever down and it comes out the holes of a cylinder looking kind of like rice (or angel-hair pasta if it weren't crumbly at all). Somehow I thought this might be one of our English heritage things like a plate of bread and butter on the table.

[amethyst]

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

Christmas trees lit up in peoples front windows

[Semi42]

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

Mam paid in to some weekly club and got a hamper at Christmas time with obscure goodies we would never normally have day to day.
game soup, lobster bisque etc,
was always a thrill opening the hamper box
Christmas really only started for me when we got the festive season radio and tv times that covered the Xmas fortnight. Being the youngest , I was always last for perusal , but the stuff that was to be broadcast over the hols got me in the Xmas spirit. It was spotting and marking out the obscure programmes tucked away on early/late , or on bbc2 that made me feel really festive

[OptimusPrime1980]

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

Remember one year, 1987, we stayed awake til around 1 ish, heard a noise coming from the roof, which sounded like Santa's sleigh stopping. We were so excited.

[amethyst]

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

Making a list for Santa

[beccabear67]

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

For me it was the food! Many being things you only got once a year... creamed celery, roast turkey and stuffing, 'riced' potatoes, brussel sprouts, both trifle and Christmas pudding for desert, Japanese mandarin oranges in green tissue, eggnog (with rum when old enough), squeeze cheese tubes to squeeze onto wafers, stuffed olives, smoked oysters and rollmop pickled herring! And then boxing day it was leftovers and it was still great food!

I also liked it when someone would bring crackers for everyone, didn't happen every year, then you got to see even old aunties or your grandad in daft paper hats!

I liked seeing that Rudolph Reindeer special every year too, the stop-motion one with Burl Ives as a singing snow man and a dentist elf... I never get tired of seeing at least some of it to know it's Christmas, that's probably to me what that one Slade song is to most people.

[Mulletino]

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

The best bit was the build up, looking in the Toys in the Argos or Marshall Ward catalogue to see what toys i would hope to be lucky enough to get.
The anticipation of xmas morning on xmas eve night.
The decorations
the TV shows, it was the only time we'd buy the TV Times or Radio Times and would get both to plan our xmas viewing.
The sweets.
XMas Dinner
Opening presents with my family
Billy Smart's Circus
The queen's message
Crackers
Snowball drinks
staying up late
family visiting
xmas shopping
the magic of santa
everything

[teepee]

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

I had the great good fortune to be born in Birmingham, so we got to see the real Santa, who lived in the grotto on the top floor of Lewis's department store. The queue to see him snaked all the way down six or seven flights of stairs and half-way down the street, but it added to the excitement and no-one minded waiting. Everything about that time of year was exciting: putting up decorations, dressing the tree, the card mail service at school, whatever Blue Peter was up to any particular year. And didn't there used to be just something in the air? God, how I miss it!

[amethyst]

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

Going to see the pantomime on boxing day

[George 1978]

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

My parents used to leave my presents outside my bedroom door, & I insisted that they left some there even when we started to leave them under the tree. It was only in my late teens when I stopped doing this.

I don't think that my parents would have done that - with the landing light switched off and being so close to the top of the stairs, shall we say that leaving objects on the floor outside would have been a bit dangerous? I once left something outside my door and my late mother tripped over it as the light was switched off.

[Richard1978]

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

My parents used to leave my presents outside my bedroom door, & I insisted that they left some there even when we started to leave them under the tree. It was only in my late teens when I stopped doing this.

[George 1978]

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

Waking up to find all the presents at the bottom of the bed

Yes, that what happened to me as well - I used to think that the bedroom was a really magical place during the early hours of Christmas Day in the early to mid 1980s.

[amethyst]

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

Waking up to find all the presents at the bottom of the bed

[darren]

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

A few things being allowed to go down on chrimbo morning had to wait till i was allowed.

Opening the pressies tearing off the paper in excitement.
Seeing what the telly had on to watch.

Over the yrs christmas day tv aint as good.