Christmas in Days Gone By

Posted: Sunday, November 22, 2009

by Louis Siedle

Christmas comes but once a year, fortunately, even if that makes me sound like Scrooge!

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It has really lost much of its charm, thanks to retailers chasing the almighty dollar.

As a kid in the '50's I recall it was a magic time. As I had been sent from Ceylon to boarding school in Scotland, I spent my school holidays with my Aunt in the country outside Glasgow.

She bustled around for several weeks before Xmas making the cake & icing it, making various sweetmeats & the pudding, ordering some luxury groceries by phone from a friend in Glasgow who owned an upmarket shop, boiling the ham and making arrangements to obtain a pheasant, salmon, or other special item from various locals, who I suspect may have been poachers! I helped by licking out the bowls!

Uncle Tom set up the tree in the sitting room in a bucket suitably covered with fancy paper, with pine boughs spread around under it on which the gifts would be laid & I helped him decorate it. He had spent much time in Germany & Austria before WW1 & was strongly influenced by the traditions of those countries, which included a quiet family gathering on Xmas Eve, presenting & opening gifts after a light meal, then having guests in or going out to friends for a formal lunch on Xmas Day.

Most evenings included games like rummy, chinese checkers, tiddlewinks or dominoes, as we did not have TV until after 1960. If guests were visiting, the adults usually enjoyed a game of bridge.

Stockings were put out at the foot of the bed on Xmas Eve for Santa to fill with fruit & nuts to keep kids quiet for some time the next day.

Most of the gifts in those days were home made, or at least modestly priced, as there were no credit cards then. Much time was spent in thinking what would be appropriate for the people you were proposing to give a gift to, followed by careful shopping around, with considerable time spent on wrapping the item and composing a carefully worded card addressed to the recipient.

These days little thought often seems to be given to what gifts might be most appropriate for a person. Often shopping is left to the last minute, with items hurriedly picked from shelves, paid for by credit card & wrapped by the shop assistant.

As a kid I was a bookworm, but these days, although I still enjoy browsing in bookshops, I have taken to using the web to check out the latest offerings from authors I enjoy. That is not to say I always purchase online, but I have to admit it saves me much foot slogging.

Naturally Amazon comes to mind, and it receives several mentions in my blog, as it is not just an online bookstore these days. However, search capabilities now are such that opportunities are virtually endless.

Just make sure you ignore the seasonal hype & keep your credit card under lock & key to ensure your New Year is not a poor one!

Louis Siedle is a retired company secretary whose many interests, apart from golf, include travel to interesting parts of the world, where he particularly enjoys trying out local food and drink. His blog covering travel, golf, stock trading and economic rants can be seen at http://info-nomad.blogspot.com

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