Christmas Memories

I suppose it's because I am far from my family that I have been thinking about Christmasses long ago. I can remember lots of things about Christmas when I was a child. My Mum always put a light in the window on Christmas Eve to light the family home.

I remember my Mum spent hours sewing nurses' outfits one Christmas for my sister and I, and being so disappointed that it wasn't the cowboy outfit I'd asked Father Christmas for. My sister being a much more feminine and grateful girl was delighted. I didn't realise then that my parents didn't have much money and that Mum was 6 months pregnant with our little brother.

The noisiest Christmas was when my little brother then aged five or six had a drum kit for Christmas and Father Christmas had the bright idea of setting it up in his room. We were all woken at 5.30am Christmas morning by the raucous noise of him happily playing with his new present.

I remember the year I bought my brother his cowboy outfit and he wore it all Christmas day. My mum went upstairs on Christmas night to check on him and my little sister after an exciting and long day. When she went to tuck him in, he was fast asleep but still wearing the cowboy outfit under his pyjamas and the hat down over his eyes.

My little sister aged about 6 months surrounded by beautiful toys but playing with a couple of cardboard boxes and some sparkly flowers and beaming benignly at everyone.

I remember waking up one Christmas morning very very early, knowing that Father Christmas had been because I could feel the weight of the stocking on the end of my bed. We were not allowed to get up until we were called. So I gingerly eased myself in the bed until I could reach the stocking and pulled it into bed with me and cuddled it, trying to guess what was in it by feel. Waiting for ages, it seemed, until I heard my Dad go down to make tea for him and my Mum, hearing him come back upstairs with the tea, and then the five minutes before he called us seemed like an eternity.

Parhaps the best and funniest Christmas memory of all is of my Nanna, and my Great Aunt, probably then in their late sixties laying on the floor shooting at a paper target with a toy gun that fired rubber stickers and laughing uncontrollably. We children looked on in amazement at these two elderly ladies but we learned that having fun is great at any age.

The Christmasses we had as children were noisy, busy affairs, full of family, laughter and love.