Christmas is Coming!

WOW! Only 35 days until Christmas. It's my favourite holiday season, and I have so many memories of others, over the years. I love everything about it, singing the carols, the nativity, the decorations, the tree, Christmas songs, the food, and -of course - Santa Claus.

Today everything is so much more glitzy than when I was a child, it's not as simple as it was back then.

I remember one year I got a Sindy doll and I loved her dearly and used my pocket money, for months afterwards, buying her outfits and accessories.

I also knitted and sewed lots of clothes for her too. I was quite good at both, at an early age.

That same year, my nan and granpop gave me a pencil case.

I have lots of childhood memories around my nan, she made the Christmas puddings for the whole family. It was a big thing, back then, to stir the Christmas pudding for luck, so when she was making them, she'd have me stay over (I was the eldest and thus the only one interested!) and I'd get to stir the mix and put the sixpences in. It was also lucky to get a sixpence in your Christmas pud when you were eating it.

My nan also saved new pennies and ha'pennies throughout the year, and then divided them for all of us grandkids at Christmas, so we had all these shiny new coins to spend!

Back in those days, you could go to the sweet shop and get quite a nice bag of sweets for 6d (sixpence), with fruit salad and blackjack chews being 4 for a penny, sherbet dabs were tuppence, and jamboree bags were 3d. 

They had sweets and a toy in. My nan's pennies and ha'pennies made us kids very happy.

Every year, I got a Bunty and Judy annual in my stocking. 

They were my favourite comics for many years, into my teens actually (we were so much more innocent back then) and full of stories and interesting articles.

Another goodie that we kids loved back then was an orange or satsuma and then a chocolate assortment stocking.

Parents back then would definitely tell us to not eat them all at once!

My mum always made and decorated our Christmas cake. Not being a drinker, ours was never soaked with brandy, LOL, but was marzipanned, iced and decorated in a Christmassy theme.

Just seeing this makes my mouth water!

I miss real Christmas cake and the butter-creamed sponges here just don't compare.

Well, that's some of my Christmas memories ... what are yours?