The ghost of Christmas past...

 I was trying to think about what Christmas was like when I was a kid. I found I didn't remember much at all; probably it was just a nice time without anything dramatic to remember. 

This was when we lived in York, before I went to secondary school. One of our family traditions was to each write a note to Father Christmas and throw it up the chimney for him to catch. Dad said he was a quick reader - almost of the time the notes just fell back into the fire. But there was a little ledge you could see if you peered up the chimney and with care you could get the note to land on that and apparently float up to Santa.

In one way Christmas was not welcome: it meant that most years we had to go to church twice in the same week. Every Sunday Mum would pack the three of us into the family car and drive us to St Luke's a few miles across town. (I've no idea where Dad was on Sundays - or any other day of the week for that matter. Only that he worked for an outfit called TocH which involved not being at home.) I do know we went to St Luke's instead of the local church because my parents knew the vicar there. I so resented these trips that I would fold down the corners of the hymn book I'd been given in silent, impotent, protest. (We were taught to NEVER damage a book by writing in it or folding corners; always use a bookmark!)

Sometimes one of the treats in our Christmas pillow cases was a chocolate 'smokers kit': chocolate pipe, chocolate matchbox, chocolate lighter, chocolate cigar! I'm sure it was little better than cooking chocolate; we weren't exactly wealthy. One year Dad made me and my brother P wooden tomahawks. I think Davy Crocket was popular that year, not that I knew who he was. Oddly I don't remember any other presents.

Christmas Day at the vicarage, 1964

When Dad got a new job as a vicar we moved to a big country vicarage. It was the same year I moved to secondary school. Grandparents could come and stay. We would have a fire in the rarely used dining room and have our Christmas dinner there instead of in the kitchen (the only warm room in the house - thanks to the ancient Aga). But the highlight was being left alone to watch old Tarzan films on TV, which were shown every day over Christmas. Or playing blocker (balloon soccer) in the massive hallway. 

I'm not sure what the appeal of Tarzan was: heroic man-ape, Cheetah his comedy pet chimp, or Maureen O'Sullivan in (for their time) incredibly short outfits. I do remember that each film would have, at some point, an elephant stampede culminating with the flattening of an African village. Why didn't they rebuild the village somewhere safer?

One final Christmas tradition was that, at some point over the festive period, Mum would put the mince pies she had baked days before into the oven to warm briefly. And then remember them hours later.

When/if you leave home and have your own family you start to make your own little rituals and traditions; to give your own kids some memories. I hope they remember better than I do!