Earliest memories : Stockings filled by "Father Christmas were tied up very tightly with string and hung on the end of our beds so we could not open them till invited into the parents' room (we always called them Mummy and Daddy which sounds very twee nowadays - Frank later called Daddy Father, and I changed Mummy to Mum later) The stockings had small presents, a coin, a tangerine chocolate money and small things that would go into a long "stocking" of Daddy's
For breakfast on Christmas morning we had grapefruit and hot rolls. We usually went to church on Christmas morning - in Framlingham often to the Methodist Church and later to Earl Soham where we ended up in our teens. Daddy was presbyterian and we were all christened presbyterians. Mum was Anglican but we did not go to the church in Framlingham after Daddy fell out with the Rector (as I remember after being instructed how much to put in the collection - more than one penny!) Later we went to Earl Soham because Mum felt it was her turn to go to an Anglican church and they both liked Mr. Foster the rector.
I can't remember if we had dinner midday or later - during the war I think we sometimes went to Wallington to the Craig grandparents but my memories are very hazy. I do remember going over one of the bridges in London in such thick fog that someone had to get out and walk in front of the car.
We had a choice of Christmas pudding or jelly/fruit salad because I anyway didn't like anything with dried fruit (though I do now!) We usually had turkey I think or a "capon" which was a huge castrated cockerel I think.
We usually had one present on Christmas Eve to spread them out, and after the war these used to be the books sent by Uncle Ralph Webb who had been in the navy with Daddy during the war, and was a London Bookbinder of beautiful books including bibles and encyclopedias
I think we had family presents in bed in the morning and other presents later in the day. One year we must have gone to Leiston because I can remember my cousin Rosemary having a doll's dinner service that I would have really loved (she wasn't interested in dolls in the slightest which made it all the worse)
Auntie May (Mum's eldest sister usually stayed with us for Christmas while Helen (who made it quite clear that she didn't like being called Auntie), went to Leiston. May always went to church and never offered to look after us so Mum could go which she felt was a bit hard!
Wartime? No tropical fruit, utility pencils and crayons - no colours, paper was precious Buying sweets with rations; doing the shopping - at Carleys, Stebbings etc; not allowed to go to the Co-op because it was run by the Labour Party
Decorations - green rope with silver bells, making paper chains, big paper bells, holly, mistletoe Christmas tree with real candles
School holidays - Christmas celebrations at school - singing carols Coming home - steak and kidney pudding/pie on the first evening
Friends, seeing everyone Dining room/drawing room fire - playing monopoly, canasta etc No television, not really any radio, a few 78 records on old upright gramaphone
Not allowed to go carol singing - Grandad considered it "begging"
When the Craig grandparents moved from Wallington to Ipswich ( a large house in Tuddenham Rd now owned by the WRVS) we used to go there often on Christmas Day or Boxing Day and played interesting paper and pencil games and charades with Auntie Maisie/Mary. The family there consisted of Granny and Grandad (known as Dadda to his children and Willie to his wife and sister in law) and Auntie Lucy (Granny's maiden sister) and Auntie Cathie, Daddy's rather strangely retarded sister who lived with them (Granny always put her disability down to a vaccination when she was 10 but I believe it was probably a birth injury - certainly their lives were very affected by this in all sorts of ways
After Christmas: Boxing Day - the "Meet" at Saxtead and bringing people home for a drink afterwards Mixed hockey with Norman Borrett
We often went to the pantomime in the Christmas Holidays. Sometimes it would be a trip to London to see the Maskelyne conjuring show; we sometimes had supper at the Hong Kong restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue. I do remember driving home afterwards along the Mile End Road with the street lights shining.
Christmas 1951/2: Granny Leiston died suddenly on 28/9the December. It had been planned that Mum, Dad, Ian and Robert would go to London to Archie Andrews' Christmas Party, meet Gladys and Rosemary with Stewart at the Army and Navy Stores to bring him home for a week (M. and D. had decided they could give holidays to another child and approached the Royal Medical Benevolent Association for suggestions. The first boy they suggested had asthma which would not be easy to handle on camping holidays at Orford. Second on the list was Stewart Young and he was invited to come for a week during those Christmas holidays (M. and D. had stipulated a boy aged between me and Frank). Because of Granny's death, Barbara went instead of Mum. I think it was January 2nd. I and Michael Watson (my "boyfriend", one of our "gang", older brother of Christopher, sons of the Framlingham Barclays Bank manager) had been to the cinema in Ipswich to see "Appointment with Venus" and decided to cadge a lift home with them ( the car must have been VERY full - was it the Austin A 90?). We met on Ipswich station under the clock on Platform 2. I remember seeing Stewart coming down the steps from the bridge and thought it came directly on to the platform but he thinks it can't have done. He remembers it well too - they had come on the East Anglian - then 6.30 from Liverpool Street and had had jugged hare in the restaurant car. I was wearing my school navy gabardine mack. It was snowing and cold and on the way home - through Framsden we skidded at "Greenhouse" corner and went straight on instead of turning left.
The ten days after Christmas when we were teenagers were marvellous - Mrs. Clark's ballroom dancing classes which the boys suffered rather than enjoyed - I loved dancing. Parties at Heather Rolfe at Laxfield - wonderful food, dancing and games and always interesting boys - Jack Coker, theTaylor brothers, Graham and Colin etc. We sometimes had a party too and Mum always made lovely meringues and fruit salad. We played sardines all over the house, big cupboards and wardrobes and lots of nooks and crannies, warm fires downstairs and freezing upstairs.
Frank and I had rooms in the attic with a little landing between. One year when Stewart had chicken pox in the Easter holidays, he stayed longer than usual and painted my room scarlet, turquoise and white. We polished the floorboards and were allowed to have a real fire in the grate. The room had a huge beam across the middle to put things on or sit on. One year Christopher Brain and I sat on my bed and the leg went through the floor. M. and D. were away and Aunty Mary Blakey (Grandad Craig/Wallington 's sister) who was looking after us had a bad fright.
Christmas 1956/7 I remember particularly as I had come home early from Westfield to have my second cartilege operation on my left knee in Goodrich Ward at the old Anglesea Rd Hospital Ipswich by Mr. Bell Jones. My leg was in plaster from thigh to ankle and I came home on Christmas Eve to be thoroughly mollycoddled - I remember well the delight of getting home.
Sometimes the weather was extra cold and it snowed or froze. We used to go tobogganing at the end of new Rd past the cinema on the land belonging to first major Collins and then the Smallwoods. The Meare would freeze over between the Castle and the College and we used to go down and slide on the ice - none of us could skate but there were others who could to watch.
Before O level and A level and my degree I remember doing school work in my room cosy with the fire and far away from the hurly burly of the house, specially when at university spending hours writing essays. In the mornings it was sometimes so cold you could scrape patters in the ice on the inside of the windows.