Christmas nostalgia






It's at about this time of every year that I get nostalgic for an Easter-family Christmas. (Yes, I have heard all the Easter/Christmas jokes!)

One of my first Christmas memories was at five years old during our three years in Germany. Our German nanny, Anneliese, taught my mother how to make an adventscrantz to hang in the hallway at the bottom of the wide staircase in our rented house in Hamburg. (My father was a British Army colonel and Port Commandant of the port just after WWII.) We learned the tradition of singing carols and lighting one of the candles each Sunday of the four weeks before Christmas.

There were a few celebrations where we were not altogether as a family, while my parents lived in Egypt and we three kids were farmed out to grandparents, godparents or aged great-aunts--and sometimes not together. But when we were back as a family in England, music played a big part in the festivities--my father being a trained singer and a self-taught pianist, and all of us loving to sing. We actually went to friends and neighbors carol-singing, and then came home to crumpets, mince-pies, a roaring fire and a nice cup of tea!

No one back then decorated the outside of their houses with anything else but a front-door wreath, and Christmas trees inside were trimmed with a few ornaments and real candles. Our Christmas stockings were old long wool socks of my father's and at the ends of our beds on Christmas Eve, to be filled while we were asleep by Father Christmas, who didn't bring gifts to put under the tree, he brought nuts, a tangerine, perhaps a pen, a hair ornament, and always chocolate money. Under the tree were the gifts from our parents--one for each child--and from various relatives. My mother would ooh and aah over a hair comb or package of needles I had spent my pocket money on! And lest you think we were under privileged, far from it! 

After turkey, stuffing, bread sauce and brussels sprouts, cracker-pulling, and a brandy-soaked Christmas pud set alight to squeals of delight, the family sat down--our colorful paper hats askew--at two o'clock to listen to the Queen's speech. We never missed one (if we were in England). It would not have been and English Christmas without it.

I have seen a lot of changes to Britain in my 50+ years living in the US, including the abandonment of pounds and shillings, the joining of the European Union, the privatization of public transportation (isn't that an oxymoron?), and allowing a female to inherit the crown. But for me one of the most poignant changes over the years is in the English Christmas. Christmas lights ubiquitously adorn houses now, Christmas music begins in stores in early November, and conspicuous consumption is rampant. The Harrod's Christmas Grotto exclusive experience to Big Spenders this year was the holly on top of the Christmas pud for me.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/nov/08/harrods-restricts-christmas-grotto-to-2000-plus-spenders
The Queen still gives her Christmas message, but I wonder how many families still listen? I hope at least that tradition is sacrosanct!

Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas and I've learn to embrace the more lavish expressions of it that the US indulges in, but forgive me if, at my grand old age, I reminisce about the past on a day when my fellow countrymen and women are going to the polls to vote on yet another monumental change. To Brexit or not to Brexit? How wonderful if Father Christmas could make it all go away!

Happy Holidays, everyone!


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