Memories of Christmas
For me, Christmas always began in the middle of the cold, windy month of November. My sister, Alison, and I sat down in front of the fire and wrote a letter to Father Christmas telling him about all the presents we wanted. We seriously wrote “Father Christmas, the North Pole” on the envelope, before giving them to our mother to post.
With December our excitement grew each day — as we opened the new year calendar, Christmas cards arrived in the post, Christmas lights appeared in the streets, and we attended the town carol service. And of course, there was snow everywhere. Enough snow to make snowmen, and to have exciting snowball fights in the school playground.
On Christmas Eve, the whole family helped to decorate the house, put up the Christmas tree, the decorations and the balloons. Then, in the afternoon, when Auntie Kathleen and my two cousins arrived, everything was ready. Before we went to bed, we left some wine and biscuits for Father Christmas and then put our stockings at the end of our beds. We tried to stay awake as long as possible to see Father Christmas but the next thing we knew it was morning. Christmas morning!
At the bottom of the bed was the stocking, now full of all kinds of small presents and sweets. Christmas morning was bright and sunny and, after church, my cousin David and I went out into the garden to play with our new presents. Lunch was always late, but what a lunch! A big turkey with all the vegetables followed by Christmas pudding. I like turkey breast the best. I put so much food in my mouth sometimes that it was hard to swallow. We sang Christmas carols happily, laughed at jokes, put on silly paper hats and laughed again.
After lunch, the adults slept on the sofas in front of the Queen's speech on television while we all played cards. Then we had tea, with a huge Christmas cake covered with snowmen. It didn't seem possible, but we carried on eating. By bedtime all of the children were very tired. As soon as we turned off the light, we all fell into a deep, happy sleep.