Christmas Alone at 81? I'll Still Enjoy It.

The British never used to get bothered by snowfalls in winter. We just expected it. Growing up in Lancashire in the 30s and 40s I saw quite a few cold winters and whenever it snowed we just got on with things. There weren't snow ploughs to clear the roads so if the snow was deep you just had to stay in your home. One year after the start of the war - probably January or February 1940 or it might have been 1941, we had really heavy snow. I was ten or eleven and quite excited because I couldn't get the bus to school for days. The snow was so deep it buried the hedges. The snowdrifts were higher than I was tall. If I'd gone outside it would have just about covered me from head to toe! There was no option but to wait till it all thawed. We had a coal fire in the sitting room. Apart from that there was no heating in the house. My father, mother and I wold huddle round the fire during the day and rather dread going up to bed at night. The bedrooms were so cold there was ice on the inside of the windows. Because the electricity was off we used storm lamps from the late afternoon when it got dark. These were just glass lanterns with a wick and flame inside. They didn't give too much light really and were meant for use outdoors. I remember during my childhood seeing shepherds out in the fields going to check on ewes lambing.
My mother cooked on the stove next to the fire. It was OK, but hard to control - the temperature was just given by the heat of the coal fire.
We didn't get out to the shops for some days but war rations were in force so we weren't missing much. My mother had some preserves, milk, eggs and cured meat in the pantry so that was our diet while we snowed in. And cups of hot tea of course.

Now I've lived in Surrey for decades and when my kids were growing up they enjoyed the snow each winter. My husband and I usually set and lit the coal fires in the house but the girls soon learnt to do it too. They'd spread out yesterday's newspaper on the floor, fold it over and over to make something like a flat paper tube, tie it in knots and use it underneath dry twigs - kindling wood - to light the fire. We had a coal bunker outside where you'd go and put the shovel in the coal-hole at the bottom of the bunker to draw coal out, put it in the coal bucket and lug it inside.

I was talking about snow at Christmas because this year - 2010 - there's been so much travel disruption because of snow. The TV and radio have been reporting passengers at Heathrow airport and other British airports whose flights are cancelled so queues and queues of people can't get away on holiday for Christmas. That must be very upsetting for those who work all year and planned to spend Christmas with friends or family. The snow has caused a lot of trouble on the roads too even though these days there are services supposed to be ready with snow ploughs, grit and salt.

I'm hoping to spend Christmas with my daughter in London and her family. My son-in-law should drive down from London to pick me up on the 23rd of December so I've been listening to the weather forecast trying to figure out if he'll be able to drive or not. At 81, you have to figure you haven't got too many Chirstmases left  (maybe another 10 - I hope!) so I hope to get up to London to be with them.

I told my other daughter, who lives inFrance, that I've bought a pizza and a bottle of champagne so if the snow prevents me travelling to London at the last moment then I'll have Christmas on my own and enjoy it nevertheless! I'm lucky to have some very good friends though - and that's one of the most important things to do as you get older - be a good friend to others and look after your friendships - and two of my friends have said if I get 'stranded' here in Surrey by the snow they'll find a way to collect me and I can spend Christmas with them and their families. However it turns out, it'll be OK.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to make 18 mince pies to take up to London with me. I found a book on my bookshelves called Christmas Made Easy with a recipe for Unbelievably Easy Mince Pies. I started to make them. You don't use any liquid for the pastry, just butter, flour and sugar. You're meant to 'knead the pastry mixture into a ball' but it all fell apart in crumbs. I added a bit of liquid but that didn't help much. I'm going to press the pastry into the baking tin anyway, add the mincemeat and hope for the best.

While I was fiddling around with the recipe and the pastry my daughter called. I told her the recipe wasn's working. "It certainly isn't unbelievable easy" I told her. "Yes it is" she said. "You were warned it was unbelievable..."

Then my new Kurdish neighbour called round. I've met her and her husband a couple of times now. They seem very pleasant but I didn't give them a Christmas card as I didn't know if Kurds celebrate Christmas, or if some do and some don't. It's silly, but it can be awkward asking these days. It shouldn't be - these things are interesting. She has what I think is a red caste mark? on her forehead and doesn't drink so I had the idea she wouldn't celebrate Cristmas. Anyway, she presented me with a long blue tin of Belgian biscuits and a Christmas card and wished me a Happy Christmas. So either she does celebrate Christmas - or she doesn't but correctly assumed I do. I'll give her and her husband a Christmas card and small gift now and when I know them a bit better maybe I'll get the opportunity to ask them about their traditions and culture.

Celebrating Christmas during the war years

Christmas is such a big event these days - mostly for business and commerce, but for children too. My grandchildren, like most kids growing up over the last two decades, are used to lots of presents - electronic gadgets, mobile phones, computers, TVs...

When I was a child during the war Christmas was a whole lot simpler. At our home in rural Lancashire we had a tiny artificial Christmas tree, about 18 inches high, that we put on a little table, and we bought those highly coloured 'link' paper chains and put them up in the sitting room. That was it as far decorations went.

I got some quite good presents before the war when I was 7, 8, 9. I remember a chocolate "smoker's set" that I thought was wonderful. It came in quite a big box and had dark chocolate cigars, and white cigarettes made with some sort of fondant paste. They had pink tips as if they were alight. There was a packet of matches made from the same confection, yellowish with pink tips. I thought it was pretty sophisticated to walk around smoking my sweet cigarettes or waving one nonchalantly in the air as I chatted to a schoolfriend. It was a good present.

I also loved a sweet shop that my parents bought me one Christmas. It had small weighing scales and a little till to take money, price labels and little bottles of coloured sugar sweets. I'd set up shop in the sitting room and play shopkeeper and customer with my friend Betty at the weekends.

One year I asked my father to buy me a Hornby train. I can't remember where I got the idea for this. Maybe I saw one in a shop in Blackpool or a schoolfriend had one. I certainly didn't see it advertised on the telly because no-one had one back then. I was thrilled when I received it on Christmas morning and it was fun to play with. But I didn't get to play with it very often because we had to move furniture to clear space for its rails. We'd lug the table and chairs out of the way and lay the tracks on the carpet but it was a bit of a palaver. For a long time I kept it, in its box in a cupboard, and I suppose eventually my parents gave it away to someone else's child. Had I kept it, it would probably be worth a fortune now. In those days of course it was just another child's toy.

One year I got a celluloid doll the size of a real baby that I thought was wonderful. It didn't open or shut its eyes - they were just painted on - but it had nice painted hair and its arms and legs were moveable. They were held together inside the doll with elastic in some way - the limbs all moved - and I remember crying when I somehow broke the elastic and all the limbs fell off. My father, being a practical man, as most men were in those days, soon fixed it and it was as good as new.

The other Christmas presents I remember were edible. Every year once the war started I had a Christmas stocking filled with an apple, an orange and a brand new penny. An apple and orange wouldn't excite a child today but in the war years fruit was scarce, so it was quite a treat. I was also given a pink sugar pig each year and I really loved them. They were quite large, solid, very heavy and had white waxed cotton tails. They were made of hard, crunchy, bright pink sugar! The taste was simply of sugar but I've never eaten anything with the same texture since. I can only describe it as frosted.

These days I spend Christmas in London with one of my daughters, my son-in-law and their three kids. In the last 4 years I see my great-grandson too sometimes. My son-in-law is a wonderful cook and always makes a great meal on Christmas Day - always turkey, but often with some contemporary twist to the recipe. We drink a lot of champagne, beer and wine too. And really enjoy ourselves.

It's strange to think just how much has changed in 70 years in England. At Christmas, for example, I (almost) take for granted now things that I never had as a child. My daughter's lovely warm house. A huge Christmas tree with dozens of nicely wrapped and labelled presents underneath it. A fridge and freezer packed with all kinds of food, often from other countries and continents as is the way these days. Champagne and wine from France. Beer from Belgium and Thailand. Plenty of running hot water whenever you want it. Huge high-definition televisions (whatever that means.) Cars sitting outside if we need them. Digital cameras and digital photographs. Gadgets to put them on the computer.

Back in the war, and before and after, Christmas was a whole lot simpler. Usually dad would kill one of the chickens we kept for their eggs. We'd have a few vegetables with it and my mother would always make a Christmas cake. We didn't have Christmas pudding and there certainly wasn't any wine or champagne!

One Christmas during the war years I remember spending the day at my grandfather's place. I would have been 10 or 11. He lived in a cold old farmhouse with my uncle Jack, aunt Alice, spinster aunt Lizzie, and uncle Tom who lived there till he married a rather fierce local woman who kept the local sweetshop. My mother and father and I walked 5 miles to grandad's house - stopping on the way to go to the catholic Christmas mass.

There were no presents because no-one could afford to give anything, except to their children. We had sausages and a chicken in the farmhouse kitchen and I remember it was cold, with great flagstone floors. In the late afternoon uncle Jack went round and lit the oil lamps and the grown-ups had a glass of sherry. There was a small bottle of port too and that was it. We walked ten miles that day without giving it a thought, which you did in those days. The walk home that night was along freezing frosty country lanes under a full moon. I remember clearly walking along between my mother and father, looking up at the moon and thinking how beautiful it all was.

It was around that time that I had quite a bad accident at home. We had a cooker in the scullery but another cooker, sort of like an aga, in the sitting room. The one in the sitting room was right beside the fire and used heat from the fire. My mother used it as a way of economising on fuel. It had hot plates on the top and one wintry day I was sitting in a chair reading a book, close to the fire, when my mother put a pan of water on to boil. I managed to put my foot up and knock the boiling water all over my foot. It was very badly scalded and injured and I couldn't walk for weeks. At one point the doctor said I was developing gangrene (or was going to develop gangrene - I can't remember which) and I remember my mother being terribly distressed. (She lost her first child, my brother, when he was about a week old. He was born with spina bifida and I think the doctor prescribed some drug daily for a week which killed him.) Anyway, my treatment was changed - I can't remember if I was given medicine to drink or some ointment was applied topically but eventually my foot recovered (although it's still a bit scarred 70 years later.)

I had six weeks off school since I was quite ill and couldn't walk. I remember a teacher, Mr Fenton, turning up from my school one day to see what was the matter. In those days, in our area anyway, if a child was off school for any length of time a teacher would call round to see the parents and ask what was going on. Presumably Mr Fenton thought I was being allowed to swing the lead because when my mother explained - standing on the doorstep - that I was still ill, he demanded to see me. I still remember the look on his face when my mother brought him inside and showed him my foot. He looked quite ill and said he understood now why I was at home. Then he scuttled off back to the school.