Christmas presents in childhoods past

R

Rose65

Well-known Member
Location
United Kingdom
I do look back and realise how poor we were and how delighted with a toy, an orange, sweets and tiny things in our Christmas stockings. Above all a small doll I would treasure and put to bed nightly in a cardboard shoebox. My mum would make clothes for my dolls when she was making or repairing our clothes - a Singer machine of course.
How different those days were and I do think something hugely magical has been lost with materialism gone mad nowadays.

Do you remember the presents you got? The bigger your family the more you just understood that your presents were going to be modest.
 

Rose65 said:
I do look back and realise how poor we were and how delighted with a toy, an orange, sweets and tiny things in our Christmas stockings. Above all a small doll I would treasure and put to bed nightly in a cardboard shoebox. My mum would make clothes for my dolls when she was making or repairing our clothes - a Singer machine of course.
How different those days were and I do think something hugely magical has been lost with materialism gone mad nowadays.

Do you remember the presents you got? The bigger your family the more you just understood that your presents were going to be modest.
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I got one present once from my parents at Christmas during my childhood.. it was a little Post office game.. my father bought a Monopoly game for everyone to play.. and then bullied everyone when they didn't know the rules. I hate Monopoly to this day

He bought my brother a bike..

I got a scooter from my granny one Christmas... ..

Mostly we just got a stocking with an orange , apple, and small toy in it...
 
My grandmother shopped all year long and put things on layaway, so when Christmas came there were a lot of presents. Christmas was an overload.

I remember a story my grandpa told me. He lived in a small mountain mining town and every Christmas the ladies from a large church in the "big city" came up by train to distribute Christmas presents to the children. It was usually underwear, gloves, socks, stocking caps, hard candy, etc. One year, everybody got an orange. Grandpa had never seen an orange before. They brought their oranges home, piled them up on the table and just tried to figure out what to do with them. Cook them? Eat them whole? Finally, somebody told them what to do. He always had to have oranges and tangerines around at Christmas. We'd get one in our stockings and he'd tell us the "orange story".
 
hollydolly said:
I got one present once from my parents at Christmas during my childhood.. it was a little Post office game.. my father bought a Monopoly game for everyone to play.. and then bullied everyone when they didn't know the rules. I hate Monopoly to this day

He bought my brother a bike..

I got a scooter from my granny one Christmas... ..

Mostly we just got a stocking with an orange , apple, and small toy in it...
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Monopoly is not advisable for families , it brings out the worst in people.
 
jujube said:
My grandmother shopped all year long and put things on layaway, so when Christmas came there were a lot of presents. Christmas was an overload.

I remember a story my grandpa told me. He lived in a small mountain mining town and every Christmas the ladies from a large church in the "big city" came up by train to distribute Christmas presents to the children. It was usually underwear, gloves, socks, stocking caps, hard candy, etc. One year, everybody got an orange. Grandpa had never seen an orange before. They brought their oranges home, piled them up on the table and just tried to figure out what to do with them. Cook them? Eat them whole? Finally, somebody told them what to do. He always had to have oranges and tangerines around at Christmas. We'd get one in our stockings and he'd tell us the "orange story".
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I heard similar stories about bananas if I remember correctly, people had not had them before.
 
One year my mother had scrimped and saved up money all year for presents. She and my dad went out one night to do their shopping and had one more stop to make. They parked the station wagon and went in a store. When they came out, the station wagon had been broken into and all the presents were gone.

Of course, I didn't hear about this til years later, but I guess my mother was absolutely devastated.
 
jujube said:
My grandmother shopped all year long and put things on layaway, so when Christmas came there were a lot of presents. Christmas was an overload.

I remember a story my grandpa told me. He lived in a small mountain mining town and every Christmas the ladies from a large church in the "big city" came up by train to distribute Christmas presents to the children. It was usually underwear, gloves, socks, stocking caps, hard candy, etc. One year, everybody got an orange. Grandpa had never seen an orange before. They brought their oranges home, piled them up on the table and just tried to figure out what to do with them. Cook them? Eat them whole? Finally, somebody told them what to do. He always had to have oranges and tangerines around at Christmas. We'd get one in our stockings and he'd tell us the "orange story".
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What a delightful story with your grandfather and the orange! Given that oranges were not in season then, I can understand how rare they were. Thanks for sharing!
 
jujube said:
One year my mother had scrimped and saved up money all year for presents. She and my dad went out one night to do their shopping and had one more stop to make. They parked the station wagon and went in a store. When they came out, the station wagon had been broken into and all the presents were gone.

Of course, I didn't hear about this til years later, but I guess my mother was absolutely devastated.
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That's simply awful. Theives are despicable and cannot know how they devastate their victims.
 
Yes I remember many of them over the years.
My fathers had a company Christmas party with lots of food, Christmas stocking and a main gift for each of us. One year I got a Barbie sized battery run dishwasher with little cups, bowls and plates. I was thrilled.
 
jujube said:
What I really wanted more than anything was a chemistry set. I was told every year, "No, dear, those are for boys." I'm not sure whether my mother actually believed that or if she just didn't want me blowing the house up.

Darn it, I'm buying myself a chemistry set for Christmas this year. I've waited long enough.....
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I always wanted one too and never got one. Apparently it would be smelly and messy.

The very best pressy was a 'Meccano' set.
 
I was very happy with my Christmas presents when I was a child. I always got books, a game once in awhile (Sorry is the one I recall), Barbie and Skipper, Betsy Wetsy, and Chatty Cathy. My mom sewed Chatty Cathy a beautiful wardrobe. One year I got a Kodak Instamatic camera ... I used it mainly to take photos of our dog -- the difference between photos taken today and back then is amazing.

I looked online at old Betsy Wetsys. Boy are those ugly dolls, but I didn't know it when I was little.

I loved Christmas. My sister and I made and filled stockings for our parents and the dog. We sewed jingle bells on the dog's stocking.

My dad was in the service, so our family definitely wasn't wealthy, but we didn't know it. We kids were perfectly content with what we had. The only thing I wanted that I didn't get was a huge stuffed St. Bernard ($25). I wanted a real one, too, but I decided to wait until I was an adult. By then, I wisely decided that was too much dog for me.
 
First Christmas living with my Grandparents was my dog and Christmas number 2 was my bike. Those were my 2 big gifts, but I got clothes and games and other stuff also. They gave me some pretty nice Christmas's. One year, I got a really nice boom box for my room with all the buttons and whistles. That was a big deal for me.
 
Like several others my family were 'working poor'. We had 2 particularly difficult Christmases when i was under 10 but i never felt disappointed or unhappy about the holiday till the first one with just my Mom and Me after parents seperated.

Before that the holiday season (Halloween thru New Year's) was the best time of year. In those days in the country most folks made the 'treats' they passed out on Halloween. And all of us had favorite houses to visit. My Mom made costumes for us. On year she even used old sheets to wrap one of my sisters up to look like a 'Mummy' Spent hours on that costume. From Thanksgiving thru Christmas Eve Mama baked frequently: cookies, pastries. The staples needed were cheap in those days and relatives up north would ship her containers of Lekvah (prune) filling and of poppy seed filling for the pastries.

Dad would cut a large tree from the woods, Bubble lights and 'specialty' replacement bulbs. In those days instead of having to buy a whole string of bird, flower, star, Santa or other shaped lights you could buy individual bulbs at the 'Five and Dime' cheaply that screwed into the regular string light sockets. We made paper chains of construction paper and shiny wrapping paper, and in later years when my Maternal g'ma had forgiven Mom for running off with granddad we had some glass bead garlands and ornaments that had been brought over from Hungary when G'ma and G'pa immigrated here.

There were always lots of presents for each of us kids, even in very 'lean' years. When i was 8 i was old enough to notice that the presents weren't as large or costly as in some years, tho once i could read books were a welcome gift and Dad frequented 2nd hand stores in Tampa for those. Thing is what my parents did that year made me feel how much they loved us. My sister's were in teens, so toys no longer an option for them but Mom bought them the make up and nail polish that were allowed to use in varieties of colors, and made clothes for them. Parents got me books and inexpensive accessories for the doll house and toy 'barn' i had. Also a set of 3 'leprechaun' figurines that i'd admired when shopping in the city with Mom. i remember those because one of those figures actually survived the fire that burnt our house down the following spring (the paint was cracked and faded as if years old but it somehow survived).

The next Christmas we were in a smaller house, Dad was working a job where he'd totally gone for a month then home for 2 weeks. Mama picked up some extra cash cleaning houses and making/repairing clothes. We fished and crabbed. My sister's baby sat a lot. Since the fire my fondest wish (not met on my birthday in August) was a replacement bike. The old one had been destroyed by the fire--tho parked 3 ft from the house. Then for the first time ever i saw a doll at local general store i wanted: It was a foot tall Snow White (costume right out of the Disney Movie) and the Dwarves were rubber figures, to scale with her and painted as they appeared in the movie. Mama said--you have to decide what you want most---the bike or the doll. Without hesitation i said the bike--it meant freedom to some extent.

Our tree was just a 4-5 ft one that year, and most of the decorations were hand made as the fire had claimed the old ones. But that Christmas was one of my best ever as a child. i had long since stopped believing in Santa except as 'fairy tale'. (My Sisters and Mom were most invested in keeping me believing.) When i walked into the living room that Christmas morning i broke into tears because there was a painted 2nd hand bike complete with front basket in front of the tree. That would have been enough but there was a wrapped package in the basket. The size was a clue---the Snow White and Dwarves set--from my sisters---they pooled there babysitting money to get it for me. To me, in years to come that represented the spirit of Christmas to me. The work put into making the bike look new, the pooling of $$ by my siblings to get me something i really wanted.

Over the years that Christmas grew more cherished because it was the last one with all 6 of us in the house. We would have one more with only 5 of us in a tiny apt. Then parents split for good and the year i was 11 and it was just Mom and Me. She bought a small table top tree (maybe 3 ft) lights and a few decorations. She put the tree in the tree stand and asked me to decorate it (always my parents had done this Christmas Eve--part of the 'Santa' myth to her.) Then she went out on Christmas Eve. i decorated the tree and cried a lot. Missing Dad and my sisters. i did too good a job. i decorated her tree from then until i lived too far away to come home and do it for her. My Brother was born when i was 16, Once out of the house i came home mostly for him on Christmas for several yrs.
 
One Christmas (I think I was 10) my mom gave me a dollhouse she had made. It wasn't made with a kit...she cut all the wood pieces herself. It had a fireplace with painted on flames and she made the living room furniture. The kitchen consisted of a metal stove, sink and icebox that she'd been given in the late 1930s when she was a little girl. I still have those pieces and the furniture she made. Wish I'd kept the dollhouse.
 
I remember it like it was yesterday. When I was 5ys old my Mom's mother died the end of November. My Mom said we would not be having Christmas, and there would be no decorations or visits from Santa. My Dad felt bad for me and my sister who was 8yrs old. So when we woke up Christmas morning to our surprise there were 2 Sassy Susie dolls waiting for us. My sister and I were thrilled. I still have my doll and so does my sister, even though we were offered $1,000.for them years ago. We both put our dolls under our tree every year. I will never forget that Christmas.
 
We were poor. Didn't know we were. Christmas was a special time for our family. We went to Midnight Mass and sang Christmas songs on the way home. Mum always made a beautiful fruit cake and the house smelled lovely. My sisters and I got 2 presents each. Usually clothing and a small toy, sometimes a game which we all had to share. One year my eldest sister got a baby doll, and I got a small pram, so we had to share. The best part was we always made our own Christmas decorations, and Dad bought home a small pine Christmas tree, I loved the smell of it. I always thought Santa would bring me a lovely Bride Doll, which I never got. When i finally married my husband bought me a lovely Bride doll which sat on our bed every Christmas. Dreams do come true!
 
oscash said:
We were poor. Didn't know we were. Christmas was a special time for our family. We went to Midnight Mass and sang Christmas songs on the way home. Mum always made a beautiful fruit cake and the house smelled lovely. My sisters and I got 2 presents each. Usually clothing and a small toy, sometimes a game which we all had to share. One year my eldest sister got a baby doll, and I got a small pram, so we had to share. The best part was we always made our own Christmas decorations, and Dad bought home a small pine Christmas tree, I loved the smell of it. I always thought Santa would bring me a lovely Bride Doll, which I never got. When i finally married my husband bought me a lovely Bride doll which sat on our bed every Christmas. Dreams do come true!
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Your post reminded me--i had a maternal aunt i loved before i ever met her in person. She sent presents for my sisters and myself every Christmas. My box usually had a book, a toy and a dress. My much older sisters would get clothes, scarves, jewelry, makeup. Keep in mind they were not blood relations to Aunt Maddy, but Mom loved them so she did too and she didn't feel right about sending for me and not them.
 
Battery-operated toys were all the rage when I was a kid. The toys ate big D-cell batteries, several of them, and so were heavy when loaded with two to four batteries. I got a “Fighting Lady” battleship one year for Xmas. As the fool thing was about three feet long, my mother was eager to get rid of it once I had grown out of interest in the toy. Pity, because they’re now selling at auctions…

 

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