by Paul Feeney
Magazines kept the family informed as to what a home should look like at Christmas.
It seemed an age since the autumn half-term holiday, which was back in October, and it was over a month since the excitement of Guy Fawkes Night. There wasn’t much to break the monotony in between the summer holidays and Christmas, and what with the dark nights of autumn being so cold and damp you just longed for Christmas to arrive and cheer everyone up! Unlike today, the Christmas season didn’t really begin until well into December. It would be early in December before you would see the first real signs of Christmas on the high street, with shops decorating their windows to look festive. At about the same time, your school would start to plan for its customary Nativity play, and they would begin to organise choir practice for the Christmas carol concert. Once the school’s Christmas activities got under way then the whole atmosphere around school was very different from the rest of the year. Even if you weren’t chosen to play the back half of a donkey in the Christmas Nativity play, you could still help to make the costumes and the scenery for it. And, so what if you were only going to be second reserve for playing the triangle in the school band on the big day, you could still enjoy the rehearsals! Being chosen to help make the traditional classroom crib for baby Jesus was a big honour, and there were many disappointed volunteers, but learning to sing all those Christmas carols really did lift everyone’s spirits. It was your first experience of do-it-yourself, fabricating an old cardboard box into a credible animal stable using very little in the way of materials; paint for the walls, cotton wool to represent snow on the roof, and straw to cover the floor of the stable – not forgetting a big shiny star made out of cardboard and covered in silver glitter. Once the stable was finished, you had to position all of the handmade Nativity crib figures inside: baby Jesus in a small straw-filled manger, Mary and Joseph, the three kings bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, and the donkey – with as many other animals as you could fit in. There were always some funny looking camels – or perhaps they were sheep! It didn’t matter if you came from a religious background or not, everyone got into the theatrical mood of Christmastime. Schoolwork was much less tedious during those few weeks in December because you were so immersed in the excitement and celebration of Christmas, and lessons were just something that happened in between. Your main thoughts didn’t revolve around what you would be getting for Christmas, or how big your presents would be. You were caught up in the whole occasion of the season, and it was the combination of events that made it all so enjoyable. Usually, in primary school, shortly before you broke up for the Christmas holidays, you had your school Christmas party. If it was a big school then you probably had a party just for your class, with loads of jelly and fairy cakes, Christmas music, and games like pass the parcel and musical chairs. Christmas really was worth waiting all year for!
Christmas Shopping
These were times when women were not yet fully emancipated; there had been a lull of more than twenty years in feminist activities, and women’s equality issues didn’t spark off again until the 1960s when the second-wave feminist activists rose from behind the parapet to re-ignite the arguments for women’s cultural and political equality. Working women of the 1950s were not paid the same rates as men, and men were considered to be the breadwinners in the family while women were thought of as homemakers, and whether they held down a full-time job or not, women were expected to look after the home and care for the children. They just couldn’t shrug off the ‘housewife’ tag. The age of ‘modern man’ had not yet arrived, and 1950s men just didn’t do washing, ironing or shopping. As a result, the task of Christmas shopping was left mainly to the woman of the house – your mum.
At Christmastime, more so than usual, you were probably enlisted as a reluctant bag carrier, following in your mum’s footsteps as she trudged around every market stall, shop and department store on the high street, shopping for all those Christmas essentials. There were no shopping malls, supermarkets or self-service shops to brighten the shopping experience. Instead, there were loads of individual specialist shops, and shopping seemed to take ages, what with your mum stopping for endless chats about the weather with each shopkeeper, and dread the thought of her meeting a friend en route – that could take up an hour! Constantly weaving in and out of shops and between market stalls, the bags gradually got heavier and heavier, and if it was raining, you just got wet!
At Christmas, the high street atmosphere was so different to today. You didn’t see people walking around with silly red Santa Claus hats and brightly coloured Bermuda shorts like you do now. People were much more reserved back then, and even got dressed up in a posh frock or a shirt and tie to go high street shopping. The shop window displays were always very Christmassy, particularly in the department stores, where windows were dressed with all sorts of wonderful festive scenes. Many a lost child would be found gazing through a department store’s window at a display of lifelike mannequins and wondrous objects that had been arranged into a Christmas setting; he or she would be completely captivated by a scene that was worlds apart from their own lifestyle. The air around the street markets was filled with the smell of fresh pine Christmas trees, and the market stalls were strung with hundreds of coloured festoon lights. There was always a man on the corner roasting chestnuts over red-hot coals in a brazier – another great smell of Christmas! The Salvation Army band played festive music and sang carols, generating goodwill and encouraging everyone to drop a few coppers into the hat for charity.
In your eyes as a young child, Christmas shopping didn’t include buying toys or presents for you or your siblings because Santa brought your presents on Christmas morning. Presents were bought for family and other people, but they always seemed to be boring presents, like scarves or socks – nothing exciting like a Davy Crockett hat or a high-speed glowing yo-yo. Even with all those marvellous toys, games and novelties on display in shop windows everywhere, your mum’s main focus was on food. By the late 1950s, still only one in four families in Britain had a fridge, which meant that most working-class families managed to live without a fridge throughout the ’50s. Mums needed to do a lot of strategic planning when buying food, drink and other perishables, particularly when there was the added burden of rationing in the early ’50s. Food wasn’t pre-packed in plastic as it is today, and nothing was date-stamped with use-by dates. You had to buy things as fresh as possible to get maximum use out of them, but there was no way of telling how long something had been in the shop, let alone how long it had been in the food processing chain. Mums acquired the skill of detecting the freshness of things like meat, fruit and dairy products; but however fresh the food was, without the use of a fridge your mum had to shop every couple of days to keep the family fed and avoid food going off. Unlike today, you couldn’t just pop out to the shop at any time of the day or evening, seven days a week. In the 1950s, many shops were shut on Saturday afternoons, even large stores like John Lewis in London’s Oxford Street. And, apart from the corner newsagent’s shop that opened for a few hours on a Sunday morning, there were no shops whatsoever open on Sundays. On top of that, every area had its half-day closing each week, usually on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Some shops didn’t open at all on Mondays; again, John Lewis branches used to be closed on a Monday to give staff, known as Partners, a proper weekend break.
You really needed to know your local shopping area’s opening and closing times, and plan your shopping needs around them. This was even more difficult at holiday times like Easter and Christmas, when all shops were shut during the bank (public) holidays. If Christmas Day happened to fall on a Monday then the last day for buying food was Saturday, and it would have to last until the following Wednesday when the shops opened for business again. Even on the Wednesday, other than on-site family bakers, most shops wouldn’t have any fresh food stocks because nobody had been working over the Christmas period to produce them. Therefore, mums tried to buy enough food to last through until a couple of days af
ter Christmas. This led to large pre-Christmas queues outside shops selling bread, vegetables and meat. Most mums placed advance orders with the shopkeepers but they still had to queue to collect their order. It wasn’t unusual to see enormous queues gathering outside baker’s shops on the day before and the day after a holiday. Bread was a very important part of a child’s diet, often the cheapest and quickest remedy for your hunger pangs, and families didn’t like to run out of it. Tinned meat and other tinned foods were also bought as a back-up. Then there were all the Christmas trimmings, like nuts and dates, Christmas crackers and balloons, and perhaps a few replacement decorations for the ones that were broken last year. Your dad was roped in to get the Christmas tree and to make sure there was enough coal or logs for the fire, and while he was at it he probably bought a few bottles of something ‘special’ to add some Christmas cheer. Even people that didn’t usually keep any alcohol in the house would make sure they had a bottle of Sherry and a bottle of Port to offer visitors a Yuletide drink.
Christmas at Home
The tradition of sending Christmas cards is still very strong today, but in the 1950s few homes had telephones installed and so the only way to pass on Christmas greetings to family and friends was by way of Christmas cards, postcards or letters. This was another task usually left to mum – not much has changed in that regard! The build-up to Christmas started much later in the home than at school. There may have been some early recognition of it approaching; perhaps your dad had a go at making a doll’s house, or your mum might have started knitting a ‘lovely’ Christmas jumper for some lucky recipient. Mostly, there was little evidence of Christmas until very near the day itself, when the decorations went up in the living room and a space was made for the tree. You probably also cleared a spot on the sideboard where the crib could go, and helped mum and dad to blow up the balloons – an impossible task for young lungs with little puff.
As Christmas started to get nearer, your mum would have had a good tidy-up to make sure that everything was spick and span for the big day. Positioning and decorating the Christmas tree, and hanging sprigs of holly and mistletoe from the ceiling, these were the things that signalled the start of Christmas in the home. Some people still followed the old tradition of putting candles on their trees for decoration … Well, there were a lot of burned-out houses around in the 1950s! However, in the main, the Christmas tree would be decorated with baubles, bells, ribbons, chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil, and balls of cotton wool to represent snow, with the customary angel or fairy doll perched at the very top of the tree. Christmas tree lights, or fairy lights as they were sometimes called, didn’t become popular in the home until the late ’50s, and then they were expensive and could be very dangerous. Your first ever set of fairy lights probably came from Woolworths – they sold everything.
A few days before Christmas, your dad splashed out threepence to buy his ‘once a year copy’ of the Radio Times to see what exciting Christmas treats were on the radio and television over the Christmas week. Mum spent a lot of time in the kitchen making the Christmas cake, Christmas (plum) pudding, mince pies and sausage rolls. And you wrote your letter to Father Christmas in Lapland, telling him what presents you would like and begging him not to forget you.
Christmas itself was really short-lived, and it was only on Christmas Eve that the Christmas celebrations at home really began; that was usually after your dad got home from work. People tended to work long hours and there was no such thing as finishing work early on Christmas Eve. The night before Christmas was, in many ways, more exciting than the day itself. There weren’t many Christmassy programmes on the radio or television, apart from carol concerts, and you might be treated to an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Mostly, everyone was busy, wrapping individual family presents or helping mum to sort out last minute jobs around the house. A number of people went to midnight mass at their local church on Christmas Eve, which for some was just for the novelty of it, and for others it was to satisfy a once-a-year twinge of conscience, but mostly it was regular churchgoers that went every year.
Every child went through the ritual of leaving something in the fireplace for Santa when he came down the chimney to deliver the presents, but once again your dad managed to skate around the perpetual question, ‘How will Santa get down the chimney without getting burned?’ You decide to give up on that subject; maybe your dad isn’t that clever after all! Instead, you pester your mum to see if it is time yet to put Santa’s glass of milk and mince pie in the fireplace. Dad suggests that you leave a carrot out for Santa’s reindeer, Rudolf, and that Santa would probably prefer a glass of Sherry instead of milk, but mum says that’s not a good idea because after a glass of Sherry he could fall off the roof!
A shy young girl visits Father Christmas at Santa’s Grotto in Gamages department store in central London in 1955.
Suddenly, you are aware of the sound of carol singers in the street outside, and you rush to the window to see. There is a large group of people in the middle of the road holding song sheets and lanterns, and there are others going door-to-door collecting money. These are the last carol singers that you will see this Christmas and so you stay at the window to watch and listen, and your dad goes outside to give them some money. With the carol singers gone, it won’t be long before you are tucked up in bed and dreaming the night away, hoping that Santa hasn’t forgotten to bring your presents. Having searched the house one more time, you are still unable to find any presents that your mum and dad might have hidden away from you, and so you go off to bed early in the hope that morning will come quicker. Before climbing into bed, you reposition the empty stocking (optimists used a pillow case) that is hanging at the end of your bed, just to be sure that Santa will find it easily and without having to search for it. Once in bed, you close your eyes and try to stay awake as long as possible, in the hope that you might see Santa when he comes to your house, but as the minutes tick away, you gradually slip into a dreamy slumber.
Soon it is morning, and even though it’s very early, not even the cold air in the bedroom can deter you from climbing out from under the blankets to investigate the bulging stocking at the end of your bed. Nothing too exciting in there, but you are very happy to find it filled with the usual Christmas mix of sweets and other goodies. You know that your parents are still sleeping, but you deliberately make noises to wake them up in the hope that the day can begin. After all, it is Christmas!
Family life was much more organised back then; people tended to get up at a routine time each day, even on weekends and holidays. Meals were usually at fixed times, and you were expected to be at the table on time. Although there wasn’t much difference in the way most families organised their Christmas Day, with breakfast, church, dinner, Queen’s speech, and sandwiches and cake for tea; there was some inconsistency when it came down to opening presents. In some families, everyone just dived in once the whole household was up, with wrapping paper flying everywhere. Not a bad plan, because it gave children the whole day in which to play with their new toys and games, keeping them occupied, and hopefully quiet. Other families went to church on Christmas morning and the presents were left until after they got home. Different families had different rules for when presents could be opened, like after breakfast, or after Christmas dinner when all the family was together, or maybe when granny arrived. These were all very polite ways of doing things, but a bit mean on the kids!
There were always one or two children out in the street early on Christmas morning trying out their new roller skates or hula hoop, more so in the late ’50s when people were a bit flusher with money. It was pitiful to watch this from the window, while your own presents were still neatly wrapped up under the Christmas tree. Some kids weren’t even allowed out of the house at all on Christmas Day, which was hard to take if you got a new scooter for Christmas … real torture! Christmas presents improved as you moved through the ’50s and further away from the frugal post-war years. If you were lucky, you
would get at least one big present, a wind-up toy, a big doll, an Airfix model or Meccano construction kit, or a board game or something. Almost everything else would be what adults would call ‘practical’, like socks or a set of cotton handkerchiefs with your initial embroidered in one corner of each hankie. Faraway relatives would sometimes send you money, and those were the best presents of all.
Everyone got dressed in their Sunday best on Christmas Day, even if they were staying at home. Typical 1950s dads didn’t do casual anyway, collar and tie was always the order of the day. The table was laid early for Christmas dinner, with all the best glasses and cutlery, and of course the Christmas crackers. The dinner always seemed to be served sharp at one o’clock, and it was somehow important to be finished in time for the Queen’s speech. Many families had roast chicken for Christmas dinner instead of the traditional turkey, as turkey was too expensive. Goose was also popular, but again, it was dearer than chicken. Your plate was filled to the brim with roast potatoes, stuffing, and all sorts of fresh vegetables. When you were stuffed full of Christmas dinner, your mum would bring in the Christmas pudding, into which she had already put some threepenny and sixpenny pieces. It was considered to be lucky if you found one in your piece of pudding – extra lucky if you broke a tooth on one! As was the tradition, your dad would pour some of his Christmas brandy over the pudding and set fire to it. You would then struggle to eat the smallest piece of what was a very rich plum pudding, whilst trying to avoid swallowing one of the coins that were buried somewhere inside it.