[dotti34]

I remember a very different Christmas when I was a young child to what it is now. My mother would buy three packets of crepe paper and we would sit and make chain decorations out of them, which we would then drawing pin to the walls from corner to corner and up in the middle of the ceiling. It was such a happy fun time sitting and making these. We had some decorations that we kept from year to year and my dad would bring home a real Christmas tree that we would put these on. None of this happened until Christmas week.

On Christmas morning a pillow case would be on my bed and this would hold an orange, nuts (hazelnuts which my dad would have collected from the hedgerows), a book, and there was always one main present, like a doll or a blackboard and easel, I remember getting those. I also know that my mother was in a club for six months, saving to buy presents for us kids. My siblings (all much older than me) got selection boxes but I didn’t like chocolate as it made me feel sick. A coveted bottle of wine might make an appearance for the adults, saved for and treated with respect. The only bottle for the year.

How simple it all was but I guarantee we had more fun then than the children of today have, irrespective of how much money is spent on them. It was a magic time.