Folklore: Old Fashioned English Christmas

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 03:43 PM

And I'm sorry to have stirred up so many unhappy ones.

They didn't read like unhappy memories to me mostly, jaze. There's great pleasure in remembering hard good times, and knowing things are a bit more comfortable these days. People who haven't got that kind of thing in the background area must miss a lot of the fun of being warm and well-fed and all.

And in spite of everything, there's still stuff you miss from those kind of times.

It ought to be possible to get the best of both worlds, and I imagine that's what you'd be aiming at.

Here's a Christmas Song -

Paper chains, paper chains,
held together by paper chains,
Seasons pass, and times may change,
but we're held together by paper chains.

Paper chains from a far-off night,
with the Christmas moon so round and bright
We were tired and busy and on our way,
but the paper chains made us stop and stay.
Paper chains, paper chains,
held together by paper chains,
Seasons pass, and times may change,
but we're held together by paper chains.

There's a chain of ladies, and birds in pairs,
and a chain of fat little Russian bears,
they were cheap and flimsy to throw away,
but those paper chains are still here today.
Paper chains, paper chains,
held together by paper chains,
Seasons pass, and times may change,
but we're held together by paper chains.

Well they're worn and mended and torn and tied,
but they still cling on every Christmastide,
and it seems each time that they'll break and tear,
but they still hang on for another year.
Paper chains, paper chains,
held together by paper chains,
Seasons pass, and times may change,
but we're held together by paper chains.

All round the room like a chain that binds,
and we're safe inside for another time.
And the small birds kiss, and the bears hold paws,
and the chain of ladies can dance once more.
Paper chains, paper chains,
held together by paper chains,
Seasons pass, and times may change,
but we're held together by paper chains.

Then it's time to fold them and lay them by,
and turn once more to a world that flies,
while Christmas waits, with the paper chains,
God keep us safe, till we meet again.
Paper chains, paper chains,
held together by paper chains,
Seasons pass, and times may change,
but we're held together by paper chains.

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: Joybell
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 04:30 PM

What a lovely song McGrath. Is it yours?
I remember the paper streamers that we held when we saw a relative off at the dock. 1948 it must have been. Passengers on the ship held one end of each streamer while someone on the shore held the other. As the ship pulled away the streamers broke one by one and everyone cried. I don't remember the relative who visited us but paper streamers make me cry. So do draught horses and big sailing ships and more and more songs that are not necessarily sad. Must be getting old and silly. Also I think I've told the ship and streamer story before. Old and silly it is!

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 04:37 PM

Take no notice, Jaze! We are not all coal mining ferret owners...

Having a Polish Dad, English Mum and Russsian, Polish, English and Welsh granparents was very confusing for a young lad growing up in the50's and 60's. Once I got my own family and friends we decided to take bits of tradition to make our own traditional Christmas. So, this is a good a traditional English Christmas as you will get!

We always get up early (7am-ish) to open prezzies. Breakfast, usualy 'bacon butties' comes a couple of hours later. Shower and Dress. Those of religious inclination go to church. Those with a more secular disposition slob out. Church goers back about noon. I begin preparations for Christmas dinner.

Turkey is usualy cooked the night before so it is all preparing the veg and trimmings. Oh - and start sampling the wine you are going to serve. Very important! Eventualy get everything starting to come together about 3pm (Queens speech - make the excuse that you have to check something in the kitchen.) Everything is ready usualy a half hour or so later. Allow for forgotten bits - say 4pm. Sit any number between 7 and 14 down to 'dinner'...

2 hours later, load the dishwasher and leave the table groaning about never eating another thing. An hour later go back to kitchen for bits of cold turkey, chocolates, christmas cake, blue Stilton or whatever takes your fancy. Groan about never eating another thing again. Repeat process every 30 - 60 minutes, washing things down with port, brandy or whisky until you realise that you can no longer focus...

Go to bed.

Boxing day. Get up. Start again:-)

What more can anyone want?

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 04:50 PM

You might have told it, Joybell, but I've missed it. It's a wonderful image there. The paper streamers breaking away as the ship pulled out - and in those days that was likely to mean parting for life. I wonder if that was something that often happened. Now that would make a song all right.

Yes, the song I posted there is one of mine. We've got these paper decorations we bought years ago, and they still go up each time - stuck them up last night. The songs about the importance of fragile things.

We bought most of them in the old Soviet Union gift shop they had in Oxford Street. Who'd have thought they'd outlast the then mighty USSR?

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: harvey andrews
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 06:44 PM

Jaze, those aren't unhappy memories, just memories of a simpler time when there wasn't the pressures of today. Personally, now that the boy's a man I let Xmas slip by as easily as I can.It's for kids really. I wonder sometimes why people don't see through the sham and commecialism of it all, abandon the mad spending and go back to the simple spending of time with family. All this over-consumption is no good for anybody except shareholders.

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: C-flat
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 07:08 PM

Harvey, you described Christmas just exactly as I remember them. Thank you for stirring up memories of a happy and more simple time of my life.
My daughter will wake to a heap of presents on Christmas morning but I don't think I could ever recreate the excitement my brothers and I felt as we groped, in the freezing darkness, to the foot of the bed in the hope of a pillow-case full of treats.

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: greg stephens
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 07:18 PM

As McGrath and Harvey said,jaze: those were definitely not unhappy memories. Very good memories.

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: GUEST,Fleur
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 07:20 PM

Love the paper chain song....real christmassy feel good factor,all wrapped up with a worthwhile message, will be sharing that with my three year old tomorrow.

Also love the image of the streamers tearing apart from the dockside, how evocative is that....or am i just getting seasonally sentimental, either way, Thankyou both very much for those.

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: jaze
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 10:42 PM

That's a beautiful song, McGrath. Thanks. And thank you DtG. I guess sometimes I just long for a simpler Christmas. Nostalgia, you know? I guess things weren't always so easy back then. I, too have memories of Christmas at an orphanage. But truly some of the most beautiful memories are from that time. I think sometimes, in the rush of things those times get forgotten. I want my kids(who know nothing of those kind of times) to see something else other than the latest electronic gadget. Maybe it's because families aren't as close in some respects as back then. Maybe it's because we revel in what we have. When we had nothing, it was being with each other, meals and songs that made Christmas special. Maybe I'm just longing for something that is gone. Thank you all for sharing memories--heres hoping they weren't all bad or sad. Merry Christmas, everyone! Jaze

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: mouldy
Date: 24 Dec 03 - 03:40 AM

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

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 24 Dec 03 - 04:37 AM

Ahhh,
I forgot the Milk bottle top bells - ours came in different colours... we would put them on cotton strings individually, and hang them on the tree.

My mother's sister married a US serviceman after WWII. Some time in the early 1950's I remember we went down to the wharf on the Brisbane river, and the paper streamers breaking - I think there was a band - as they sailed back to america.

A few years later they came back to Australia in the 1960's - I think they flew back to the US that time...

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 24 Dec 03 - 05:23 PM

Here is an account of this kind of thing, in 1914:

"Before sailing, down on the wharf and on the decks, vendors with trays had been selling coils of coloured paper streamers. When the gangways were down, people threw the streamers to one another while holding one end. Most of those thrown from the wharf fell into the water, but those thrown from the ship were eagerly caught or picked up by their friends.

It was a sunny day in Sydney Cove as the Macangus family left and there were so many coloured streamers it was impossible to see the other end of the SS Orama.

Karl Klosman held the end of both a red and a blue streamer, one of which had been thrown down by Carlino and one Karl had managed to throw up to him...It was great to tug and feel the tug back through the paper ribbons. Tears swelled up in people's eyes when all the streamers had been let out as the boat went further away until they had to let go, or it tore and fluttered up in the air, the tugging back and forth as a last physical contact lost until the travellers' return.

According to a caption on this site, "Australia was the first to use coloured paper streamers. After a street vendor saw two women holding a silk ribbon between ship and shore, tugging their last goodbye, he sold paper ones, and suddenly it was the way to say farewell to loved ones."

I've never heard of this - I wonder how widespread it was in other parts of the world. I wonder if the Titanic went off from Cobh like that?

It's an extraordinarily powerful image.

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: Emma B
Date: 24 Dec 03 - 07:25 PM

No, not 'bad' memories - just memories. The past truly is another country and although I might like to revisit it isn't really tourist territory. The present is my time as it is for todays children. I don't envy them (this night of all nights) their materialism and loss of 'community' but I am thankful for all the advantages we share.
The opportunity to be part of this wider 'community' is something I treasure and could never have imagined in those far off impoverished days and I would like to take the opportunity to wish all those who share it Seasons Greetings and a Happy New Year.

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: Gareth
Date: 24 Dec 03 - 07:34 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: ard mhacha - PM
Date: 23 Dec 03 - 02:12 PM

Dave, What you say is true regarding your mothers fear of running up a bill, the old people still live in fear of not being able to meet their payments.
The sad reality is the report on the News that an old couple aged 89 and 86, were found dead in their home as their gas supply had been cut off by British Gas, and the estimate that 50,000 people will die of cold this winter, this is beyond belief, it dosen`t seem possible that in the year 2003, we don`t seem to have the answer to this spiral of poverty.
Sorry again about bringing this up, but I feel it is in line with the theme of this thread. Ard Mhacha.

What Ard M has not quoted was that -

1/. The couple concerned has £1,400 in thier current bank account.

2/. And that the 'Lecy Co pretended that they could not tell social sevices that they had cut the juice off - As was thier moral duty.

Ard M - You haver a fanatical view of us Brits - Perhaps you could convert it to facts rather than fanatasicm.

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: ard mhacha
Date: 25 Dec 03 - 03:19 AM

Your Welsh friend Sian gives a figure of 2500 deaths from cold last week, and forecasts 50,ooo more over the winter, have all of these unfortunates hoards of money . Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: ard mhacha
Date: 25 Dec 03 - 08:49 AM

This tailpeice from a Guardian Leader spells out clearly the plight of the aged in the UK,
" The Public Health Faculty pointed to three factors for the excessive number of winter deaths - poor housing, inadequate heating and "fuel poverty", defined as any household which has to spend more than 10% of its income to keep warm.
Ministers should review their current priorities, under which they pay out £1,9bn a year in winter fuelallowance, but only £400m on their "warm front" programme that installs better housing insulation and heating. But the fundamental problem remains pensioner poverty, Inequality among the retired is even grimmer than among the working population.

The top fifth of pensioner couples now have a retirment income averaging £45,000 a year, yet one quarter of all pensioners- 2 million people - still live below the poverty line [a mere £5,800 for a single person].

It is time a government which is committed to ending child pooverty by 2020, set targets for the abolition of pensioner poverty too.

These numbers are the highest proportions of excess winter deaths in the European Union."

.

I wish a Happy Christmas to the cold and hungry of the world. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 25 Dec 03 - 03:20 PM

Bah, humbug. The cold and hungry of the world have themselves to blame. If the were not so feckless they would have plenty of fuel, drink and warmth.

Like me. I am full of feck and have no problems...

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Dec 03 - 11:41 PM

From your heart-rending accounts of miserably poor-but-honest Christmases, I surmise that the monarch was Victoria?

Seriously, I think my family probably would have been considered poor by most standards, but we had a farm and grew most of our necessities, so in that sense we were very well off.

I can match your deprivations in one way: We had no Christmas tree at all! I was 9 years old the one year a small tree was set up on the library table, having been collected by my 16 year old sister,and that was the only year we had one. I don't know if my parents didn't believe in Christmas trees because it was 'pagan' or if it just was a bothersome thing. We certainly had enough suitable trees in our woods.

My sisters had us youngsters cutting and pasting rings of colored paper for a week ahead of Christmas and then they tacked them on the walls and swooped them across the ceilings and around the corners. Our paste was homemade- I think it was the same kind of paste my mother used for wallpaper: gray, somewhat translucent and not very sticky. But messy. I remember the goopy floor; a sister would always mop the floor after we finished our creations each evening.

We each got one present on Christmas morning from a to-this-moment-secret someone who had "gotten your name" in the large-family drawing a month before and who watched with bated breath as you opened it to see if you liked the gift they had chosen- it was an exciting morning. We always had lots of food -usually a turkey, sometimes a goose, and lots of pies and oranges set out on the cupboards and bags of hard candy that my father doled out in a most miserly fashion. I suspect he got a lot more of the candy than we did.

Actually, I remember thinking that there probably really was a Santa Claus but my parents, being Amish, just didn't know it. I remember feeling a little protective of them.

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 Dec 03 - 02:25 AM

Dave the gnome

>Bah, humbug. The cold and hungry of the world have themselves to
>blame. If the were not so feckless they would have plenty of fuel,
>drink and warmth.
>
>Like me. I am full of feck and have no problems...

Burn your feck, do you?

I sincerely hope, My Son, that you never receive "The Blessing Of Understanding Thru Personal Experience" - it's not a curse - really!!...

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: Penny S.
Date: 26 Dec 03 - 05:38 AM

We used to hang one of my Dad's old hiking knee-length socks at the end of the bed. However, there were three of us, and at least six old socks, a fact which we did not entirely take on board. Father Christmas would cunningly obtain the remaining three socks and fill them, before sneaking in briefly to swap over without our noticing.

Years later, when the whole family assembled as adults, we used to obtain the socks from the airing cupboard, and hang filled socks on our parents' bed.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Dec 03 - 10:32 AM

Pun, Robin! Full of feck. What could feck be confused with? So full of F?ck as in full of bollocks? Yes? Oh, never mind. Probably not worth telling if I need to explain it;-)

May you live in intersting times.

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Dec 03 - 10:39 AM

PS - I already have the benefit of personal experience. I distinctly remember, with no fondness at all, having no money for the gas and electricity meters in the middle of December and having to get my eldest son a toy from a charity shop because we could afford nothing else.

If I realy did believe the that the cold and hungry brought it upon themselves I would argue that if I could get through it, they could. But I don't so I won't:-)

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: GUEST,Desdemona
Date: 26 Dec 03 - 01:29 PM

This is a great thread; full of really interesting, well-written, and often poignant memories. My mother grew up in England during WWII, and a lot of the stories above have a very similar ring; thanks so much for sharing.

Hope everyone's enjoying a happy & relaxing Boxing Day!

D.

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: jaze
Date: 26 Dec 03 - 06:22 PM

Speaking of things English--what exactly is Boxing Day?

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: Penny S.
Date: 26 Dec 03 - 06:25 PM

The day for giving all the servants and tradesmen their Christmas box, or annual tip. Why box, I do not know.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 27 Dec 03 - 02:14 PM

Could be the day that the 'poor boxes' were opened and their contents distributed to the poor. So I heard, but who knows?

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old Fashioned English Christmas
From: Joe_F
Date: 27 Dec 03 - 06:58 PM

"The awakening at 4am to inspect your stocking; the quarrels over toys all through the morning, and the exciting whiffs of sage-and-onions escaping from the kitchen door; the battle with enormous platefuls of turkey, and the pulling of the wishbone; the darkening of the windows and the entry of the flaming plum pudding; the hurry to make sure that everyone has a piece on his plate while the brandy is still alight; the momentary panic when it is rumoured that Baby has swallowed the threepenny bit; the stupor all through the afternoon; the Christmas cake with almond icing an inch thick; the peevishness next morning and the castor oil on December 27th -- it is an up-and-down business, by no means all pleasant, but well worth while for the sake of its more dramatic moments." -- George Orwell (1946)

I hope that, at decimalization, you Brits hoarded enough threepenny bits to see you thru subsequent Christmases.

Here is my Christmas reading list. It contains some more English people:

James Agee, "Lines Suggested by a Tennessee Song", in _The Collected
Poems_, pp. 71-75
W. H. Auden, "For the Time Being", in _Collected Poems_, pp. 269-308.
John Betjeman, "Christmas", in _Collected Poems_, pp. 153-154
Rudyard Kipling, "Christmas in India", "Eddi's Service", in _Verse:
Definitive Edition_, pp. 53-55, 512-513
Matthew 1-2; Luke 2
David McReynolds, "The Bowery: A Ghetto without a Constituency", in
_We Have Been Invaded by the 21st Century_, pp. 38-43
Edna St. Vincent Millay, "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver", in
_Collected Poems_, pp. 177-184
Ogden Nash, "I Remember Yule"
George Orwell, "As I Please", in _The Collected Essays, Journalism and
Letters_, Vol. 4, pp. 256-259
Jean Ritchie, "Brightest and Best...The Ritchies Take Christmas", in
_Singing Family of the Cumberlands_, Chapter 10, pp. 146-178

The last (obMudcat) contains a number of Christmas songs, plus "Barbara Allen", chosen because it was the longest song they knew & might see them thru the dishwashing. For all of being rural & American, it joins on well to Mr Orwell's description: by no means all pleasant, but well worth while.