Traditions Of Christmas Past – An Homage To The 70s Childhood

This year will be my first Christmas away from the UK.  Whilst we’ve been living all over the place for the past 6 years, we have always gone home.  My state of mind alternates between horrilble homesickness to excitement, then fear of how to even do it.

I have two children, aged 8 and 5.  The responsibility for helping to form their Christmas childhood memories weighs heavy and has made me nostalgic for my own.  And so, in a form of festive catharsis, I thought I’d share them; memories of a 70’s UK Christmas childhood:

1. HOW SO MUCH SEEMED TO COME FROM THE MILKMAN

Hampers

The hamper leaflet would arrive months before.  Here, I’m not talking Fortnum and Mason style posh wicker things, I’m talking cardboard boxes stuffed with ambient food that might be useful in

an apocalypse!  They would be named after trees in ascending order of leafy greatness and respectively priced.  I used to read the leaflet daily alongside the back of the Cornflakes box.  I would study the difference between the Silver Birch and the Elm * it was basically a can of peaches and a bigger box of Family Circle.  I woul hope Mum would choose the Oak because it had 2 flavours of Matchmakers.  We usually got Silver Birch.

Crates of Corona Pop

This was thrilling.  The opportunity to select ridiculous quantities of fizzy drinks at a time when plain orange squash was mostly as good as it got.  My sister and I would work through the order form with Mum trying to work out appropriate quantities of flavours.   We could choose from Cola (not Coca),  cherryade, lemonade, orangeade, all the ades.  Then there was Cream Soda and Dandelion and Burdoch, the latter I still have never tried based purely on knowing how unpleasant it is to lick your finger after picking a Dandelion.  Who would want to drink that, whatever a Burdoch is?

The Dairy Diary and the Book of Home Management

My mum bought the diary every year and probably every 5 years got the updated version of the management book.  The Home management one was excellent!  So full of useful things to know, like wiring a plug and sewing on a patch.   Nowadays it would simply be a book of nostalgic lost arts.

2. HOW MUCH JOY CAME FROM 4 TERRESTRIAL TV CHANNELS

Christmas TV planning came from the Christmas editions of the TV and Radio Times.  The purchase of these magazines was a kind of Christmas countdown milestone.  Remember, back then there was no internet or Netflix and things like video recorders were not even that common.  Everything you’d watch would come from BBC1, BBC2, ITV and latterly Channel 4.  But, truly, it seemed like there was so much more on!

Here are just a few of those listing highlights:

Why don’t you?

Bigger question, why does this no longer exist?  Get kids to turn off the TV and do something less boring instead.  OK, maybe the answer is iPAD but lets me optimistic.  I loved this programme!    A bunch of very over confident kids would cockily fashion crocodile pencil holders out of bean cans, felt and string and… stuff!  Then there was MORPH!  A brown living entity made from plasticine.

The Wizard of Oz

When this film came on our 70’s brown and orange sitting room would glow with emerald green and for 90 minutes or so, I would be transfixed.  It was where I fell in love with shoes, good witches, the idea of excellent friends and the dream that we all had the power all along.

Christmas Top of the Pops (when that meant Christmas songs)

If you are a 70s child you will remember these, they are often still played: Jonah Lewie Stop the cavalry!  When a child is born by Johnnie Mathis,  Mull of Kintyre, There’s no-one quite like Grandma, Mary’s Boy Child by Boney M.  And, OK, so its not especisally Christmassy but how about Save your Love by Renee and Renato?  He was definitely punching above his weight, he sang to her from a balcony with a rose. This just doesn’t happen nowadays.

3. HOW BEAUTIFULLY MESSY THE CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS WERE

Baubles made out of loads of ultrafine, shiny pearlescent string!  Glass baubles, of which 3 would smash treacherously each year.  I think safety legislation got all these by the early 80s and they became extinct.  Pendulous shiny things hanging from the ceiling and 3D, ruddy faced Father Christmas plastic wall art.  Paper bells and other items that started off flat and became 3D with the help of bluetac.  Totally non matching, like an explosion in a glitter factory.  Those were the days.  OK, I finally said it.

4. HOW THERE WAS SO MUCH FOOD THAT NO ONE REALLY LIKED

All homes would have a bowl of fancy nuts arranged on the side board (side board!) with a nutcracker poised on the top.  No one would ever eat the nuts, because other than the hazelnut, they were mostly uncrackable and there were better things to eat anyway like Matchmakers, Quality Street and After Eights.

Then there was Piccalilli and a box of dates! Again, things that came out but I can never recall actually eating.  For drinks there’d be Babycham which, when coupled with Advocaat from Warninks and a glace cherry becomes that awesome retro cocktail, the snowball!  Sherry!  Cinzano Bianco! Martini!  Campari.  Who even drank them?

5. THE JOY THAT CAME FROM AN ANNUAL

I always got  at least 2 annuals, usually something like Blue Jeans and Jackie.  I loved them.  The teen romance photo stories with boys in tight jeans, and girls with Lady Di flicks.   Advice Columns!  Pictures of David Essex with extreme chest hair and double denim.  I particularly remember a great feature on how to be popular – the main piece of advice seemingly being to share chocolate.  This explains a lot about my social standing.

But hey, its 2018, I’m in Ohio and this Christmas is going to rock.  My children, they’ve got the Elf and their emails to Santa wanting tech.  Some day soon artesan Gins and Prosecco will be as old hat as a snowball and maybe the iPad will be as retro as a ZX Spectrum.

And that’s the beauty of Christmas traditions I guess.  They will evolve for every generation, but where there’s love there will always be no place like home, wherever that may be.