I remember making the milk bottle top decorations to hang on the tree. They used to be strung onto parcel string with knots in between them. Also the paper chains. You could buy ready cut & glued strip packs at the newsagent. One year (around 1960) my mum saved up tokens and a bit of money and sent off to Cadbury's for a 3 foot silver foil artificial tree, the biggest tree we'd ever had. It looked magic with the lights reflecting on it. It lasted for years!
I remember snuggling under the quilt and not wanting to emerge because of the cold, even though I could feel my stocking on my feet at the bottom of the bed. I always had a fisherman's stocking - my mum was brought up to believe that pillowcases were "greedy"! Anything that didn't fit in was laid on the bed too. Luckily I never got bought a bike!
We always had chicken for Christmas dinner. Easter was another time we had that treat. In the days before battery farming, unless you reared your own, those families on a shop assistant's wage found beef cheaper, especially as in our case there was only 3 of us, and we weren't huge carnivores!

I had 2 southern hemisphere Christmases. I couldn't adjust to wandering around in summer clothes - something just didn't feel right. The following year we were en route to the UK and spent the day in northern Zaire. My husband slaughtered the 2 scrawny hens he bought on the local market, and we marinaded them overnight, then spit-roast them. One of my favourite photos is my filthy kids aged 4 & 5, grinning happily, playing on the ground with the 2 toys they each got that year. They each got a toy we bought and hid before the journey, plus a plastic car that we got from a local shop.

Traditions evolve.

These days, now the kids are grown up, even the one that appeared on the scene after we got back, they don't get pillowcases any more (I let mine go down the pillowcase route), and we don't open up until breakfast is out of the way. Neighbours come round for drinks at 12, when the Christmas barrel is sampled, and then I get on with dinner while the rest of them go across the road to the pub.

On Boxing Day we go down to Nottinghamshire to a session at a pub that was the traditional dance out spot for the late Mansfield Morris Men. When the side folded several years ago, the session continued. After that we go and visit friends in the area for the rest of the day. Traditionally that finishes with everybody "daggers drawn" playing games around the kitchen table. I always drive home.

Tonight (Christmas Eve) I have to take my youngest to her friend's for the evening, then later on I will be ferrying a carload to a pub several miles away. I'll be going back to our village (picking up daughter on the way and drop her off at home) a bit later to unlock the church, light 150 candles and get set up for the candlelit Christmas Eve Communion service at 10. After this I will go back to the pub and slide 'em all out - maybe I'll get time for a quick coke! It's a good job I don't drink!

My day starts shortly when I get off the computer, get dressed, and go into Selby to fetch the turkey.

Andrea