The image of a small child gazing through the window as the snow falls softly outside is timeless, just as the joy that Christmas brings echoes through the years.
TV presenter Lorraine Kelly recalls festive memories from the early 1960s.
“I used to especially love Christmas when I was a little girl,” she says.
“My favourite pressie ever was a Sindy Doll complete with a her own special monogrammed white wardrobe, and like most of the other little girls in the early sixties, I asked Santa for a nurse’s outfit and a pair of those light pink sparkly brittle plastic high heel shoes with a white strap of elastic to keep them on your feet,” she remembers.
“All year, I would pay sixpence a week into a Christmas club run by the corner shop of our tenement. I would buy my mum a box of Reward chocolates as they were her favourite.
“All the children would go out to play in the street wearing our new Christmas finery and playing with our toys. Happy days.”
For cookery writer Sue Lawrence the excitement of Christmas began with her grandmother taking her seven grandchildren to the pantomime. “Best frocks were donned and I remember one year wanting pigtails like my big sister. My head ached throughout the show but it was worth it,” she says.
Like Lorraine, Sue paid some of her pocket money into a Christmas club (Woolworth’s) so she could buy her mother a beautiful gift. “Well, ‘beautiful’ to my childish eyes. I recall a hideous blue vase one year and another, a blingy brooch that I insisted she wear all Christmas day,” she laughs.
“As well as the tree (always placed up high so the dog couldn’t get it!) we had angel chimes, which tinkled as the angels moved round by the heat of tiny candles. That and the ubiquitous Party Susan (pickled onions and cheese cubes) signalled that Christmas had well and truly arrived.”
The Courier’s whisky columnist Brian Townsend spent his early childhood in Brechin during the Second World War, and seven decades later, the war-linked memories are still with him.
“The vile howl of the air raid siren made my stomach churn and scared me stiff,” he shudders.
“My earliest Christmas memory was a children’s party when I was three in a large chilly hall with benches set around the walls. My father was away for years with the RAF in India so I’d lived in an all-female household all my life and had hardly ever met an adult male,” he explains.
“No one had told me about Father Christmas so when this huge ho-ho-ho-booming giant in big boots and a red cloak stomped in, I (and a few other kids) cried out in terror and hid under the benches. I think my mum, totally mortified, had to fetch me home. However, Santa must have forgiven me because I still got some nice presents that year.”
And another party memory comes from Courier antiques columnist and historian Norman Watson who describes the photo taken in 1959 at the Perth Ex-Servicemen’s Club Christmas party when he was four.
“Middle brother Scott, aged seven, in grey knitted jumper, is the first seated child to the right of the Xmas party sign in the front row,” he says.
“Directly behind Scott is middle sister Lyn, aged five, wearing white, with a bow in her hair and a nervous smile for the photographer.
Elder brother John, in grey knitted sweater and squint tie, is holding the big balloon near the window on the right.
“I seem a little unsure of proceedings. Not long turned four, I’m standing to the left of our mother Alide in the third row, right of centre (which she was).
“Missing is elder sister Marie, our leader, who may have been age-barred from the invitation list at 11, and our father, also Norman, a former wartime Royal Signals secret operative based for a time at Bletchley.
“Wondrous, magical Christmasses and happy memories.”
