Christmas at Middleton-on-Sea in the 1940s and 50s

Christmas in the early 1950s - when less was more

Typical display of Christmas goods at Woolworth in the 1950s

Once on a clear, sharp night in early December, our mum Betty Richards made a telephone call in the draughty hall while we eavesdropped,

“What did you say?” she asked  “He’s flying past tonight?  Thank you for telling me. I’ll be sure to let the children know. Goodbye”

She called us and announced,

            “I’ve just heard that Father Christmas is flying past tonight on his way back to the North Pole and he needs to know what presents you’d like.”  Innocent, and flushed with joy we raced upstairs to a back bedroom and clambered on top of a built-in unit to fling open the casement windows which still had nursery bars across them. Bitingly cold air rushed in. Above Southdean Drive, the band of the Milky Way arched across the sky and the piercingly bright stars shimmered. Secure in the certain knowledge that he was flying overhead, In turn we called out into the night sky.

“ A Post Office set and a toy telephone please.” I yelled.  I'd spotted this in Arcade toyshop in Bognor.

“A Hornby Dublo coal tender,” shouted my brother  

Neither of us noticed Mum with her pencil and notebook behind us secretly recording our requests.

Then began that long wait until Christmas. The shops in Bognor were not bedecked with tinsel in late October in those days nor were the impending festivities thrown in the face at every turn. Carols and glitzy Christmas party music exuding a shallow bonhomie were not pumped out on continuous loop through pulsing speakers in that era. The run-up to the festivities was all rather low key then but paradoxically all the more intense for that. During the days before Christmas, here might be carols coming through the speakers outside St. John's Church in London Road and a Santa might appear wandering up and down in the street.

At the Gateway school we’d start making paper chains with the drab, pastel sugar paper and glue strips together with flour and water paste ready to drape across the classroom. Invariably they’d be in a pile on the classroom floor by the morning but we were happy to begin again. At home we made our own chains using a little plastic spreader for an almond smelling paste called Gripfix which neither gripped nor fixed but we loved seeing the chain grow.

We went carol singing round the Southdean Estate once and carried real lanterns. Going from house to house we intoned the dirge ”While Shepherds Washed their Socks by Night” or Ding Dong Merrily on High, never knowing how many glorias to sing. When asked which charity we were collecting for I’d be shoved forward as the youngest to say winsomely,

            “For dumb animals” and we’d proffer our homemade collection box. In fact, it was a shamefully duplicitous activity but we were desperate to buy a saddle for my sisters’ shared pony called Dushka as they’d had enough of bumping along bareback.

Our mum hadn’t experienced big family Christmases in her childhood. Her parents were separated and she lived with her mother and one brother in a variety of boarding houses. Having struggled through six difficult wartime Christmases, our mum loved nothing more than to celebrate in generous style giving us everything she’d never had.

The decorations went up on Christmas Eve and were exactly the same every year. A long strand of fuse wire threaded with alternating green and red bakelite bells was stretched diagonally across the sitting room and knotted onto the ceiling light. Wisps of gritty, grey cotton wool were wrapped around the wire and then holly was wound on. The finishing touch was a general draping of silvery lametta over it all and we thought the result was captivating. Mum was up and down her ladder all morning. I remember her doing some vacuuming in the hall. The Hoover plug was a bayonet one like a light bulb. She put it in the light socket, set to work on the carpet and within a minute, flames were crackling out of the ceiling socket and running along the melting fuse wire stoked by the draught, the holly and the dry cotton wool. She yanked the whole lot down and threw it out of the door before starting the decorating all over again.

As soon as it was dark on Christmas Eve, we gathered outside the door in the chilly hall squabbling as to whether it should be eldest or youngest in front before mum let us into the sitting room which was illuminated only by the tree lights and a log fire. The Christmas tree which had red and green bulbs linked with frayed flex and fixed on with crocodile clips stood glowing in the far corner of the dark room with Shandy the dachshund's tail wagging against the lower branches. The room smelt of warm pine. Our presents, two for each of us, were arranged under the tree and that feeling of cosiness and excited anticipation is almost unbearable to recall. The sight of the pretty tree in the darkness was all the more magical as our senses hadn’t been blunted by seeing twinkling fairy lights everywhere for the past six weeks. Now we even have blue flashing Christmas lights. Are they heralding some kind of celestial emergency? Seventy years ago it was a drab era of dim central ceiling lights and beige clothing and Christmas really did feel like a Festival of Light.            

I believed in Father Christmas with all my heart and was worried that the chimney would be too hot for him but once reassured that it would be cool for his visit, I went to bed charged to trembling point with excitement.

We’d learned not to be disturbed by sirens and air raids so were all thoroughly good sleepers but my brother and I would wake at around 3 a.m. on Christmas morning and feel that glorious lumpy heaviness across our toes at the end of the bed. An old woolly sock of Dad’s would be bulging with goodies. Dipping the hand into the rough woolly tube, feeling and guessing from the shape of each item was almost the best part. What would be revealed?  A torch perhaps, a pink sugar mouse with string for a tail, a novelty pencil, a wooden dog push puppet, a small doll, a party blower with feathers, a bag of jacks. Even the walnuts and a tangerine in the darned toe seemed exciting. Our older sisters might find bath salt cubes in theirs. These appeared to be made from sand and perfumed with Harpic but to us such an exotic accessory epitomized glamour.

We'd go to the morning service at the tiny, unheated St. Nicholas church in Middleton but were frantic to get back home to open our presents.  O Come all ye Faithful seemed to drag on for an age with it's extra Christmas Day verse.

How lucky we were to have these magical Christmases. Only as an adult did I realise what a huge undertaking it was for mum to create this all for us. We barely noticed that there was also a military operation going on in the kitchen. I wish I could have done more Christmases for mum when I was married with children but by then she didn’t have much time left.