Christmas – Late 50s Early 60s
By Bo
Christmases in the late 1950s and early 1960s were simple and far less materialistic than even a decade later. When the Father Christmas myth still held sway we would be taken each year to sit on the knee of a man in red who we were assure was the ‘real’ Father Christmas. We would come away with a cheap toy and the knowledge that Father Christmas smelt of cigarettes, cheap booze and probably wee.
As dad was in the police force we would join the annual Christmas party where we would sit at long trestle tables with a bunch of strangers and eat stale sausage rolls, curled-up sandwiches, fairy cakes and jelly and ice cream and watch a magician or clown that would be hard pressed today to get work no matter how low his fees. For our parents’ sake we tried to smile when the photographer told us to say cheese.
Strangely, at some point in the proceedings we would line up to sit on the knee of another ‘real’ Father Christmas and be given another cheap toy which probably never made it home on one piece. I recall one of mine (bo) being a two-piece balsa wood plane where the wings slotted into a groove on the ‘fuselage’ – this lasted one launch when the two pieces became four on landing.
However, the ‘real’ Christmas was still exciting with a huge roast and Christmas pud after a night of anticipation when we hung up our stockings and tried to stay awake to see Father Christmas get into our rooms despite the blocked chimney.
Meagre ‘though the stocking fillings were they were more than enough to make Christmas happy. Every year there would be nuts and tangerines in the toes and a few small toys and chocolates making up the bulk with useful items like erasers and coloured crayons.
Downstairs would await our ‘big’ present. My favourite was in the late 1950’s not long after sputnik one launched the space age. Dad had spent weeks in the cellar we were forbidden to enter constructing a ‘rocketship’ for me. I could sit in it much like one could in a toy car and there was a ‘control’ panel full of levers and battery powered flashing lights. I could not have been more pleased. I remember that same year dad had made mum’s present too… a lamp carved into the shape of a ship with a flattened lampshade looking like a sail. Simpler, less affluent time times, but more packed with love, thrill and anticipation than today.