One winter
morning I opened the front door of my childhood home, stepped out onto the
garden path and fell flat on my back. It was Christmas Day 1962, I was sixteen,
and though we didn't know it at the time, this was the beginning of one of the longest and hardest winters of the twentieth century in Britain.
The rain that
had been falling as my sister and I came home from our first ever Christmas Eve
party had frozen solid overnight, coating paths, trees and, more significantly,
power lines with ice. We had woken to find ourselves without electricity and my
mother had sent me to the neighbouring farm to investigate and, if necessary,
to report the power cut, as we had no phone at home. Picking myself up, I did as
I had been asked and gingerly made my way home with the news that we had company in our misfortune, as the
entire village was without power.
 |
| Our cottage was the second from the right, with my grandfather living in the end cottage next door |
Thus began one
of the most memorable and enjoyable Christmases of my life. Not only had it
been heralded by my very first kiss under the mistletoe at that Christmas Eve party,
but it would continue to provide experiences which are still vivid in my memory
after fifty years.
Luckily the
weather was clear, cold and sunny, so that the only immediate problem was how
we were going to cook our Christmas dinner. With the electric stove out of
action, everything had to be cooked in or on the coke-fired Rayburn range which
was our only source of hot water. Christmas dinner was later than usual, but
the chicken (no turkey for us back then) was mouth-wateringly tender and
delicious after its long, slow roasting.
It was only when
the last mouthful had been eaten and the last plate washed and dried that the
real difference of this particular Christmas Day came home to us. No
electricity meant no lights, no TV or radio for the Queen’s Speech, no
Christmas specials from our favourite TV stars – in fact, no ready-made
entertainment of any kind.
Instead, as the
short winter daylight dimmed towards evening, out came the candles in jam-jars,
the playing cards and board games, and we settled down round the kitchen table
for a mammoth session of games until it was time for tea.
In the
Lancashire of my youth, Christmas tea was always a highlight of the day. Not
for us a desultory pecking at a sandwich or a mince-pie because we felt too
full for anything else. Instead the table would be laden with ham sandwiches
and salad, with jelly, trifle, mince-pies and Christmas cake and of course a
large pot of tea. How we managed to do justice to it all after so much
Christmas dinner I will never know, but do justice we did. Eating by
candlelight made it even more special that year, and in my mind’s eye I can
still see my parents and grandfather and my sisters round the table in that
gentle glow.
After the
tea-things had been washed up, it was back to the games until it was time for
an essential part of all my childhood Christmases – singing carols round the
candle-lit Christmas tree in our little front room. The tree was minuscule, a
two-foot tall fir which was dug up from the garden each year and brought
indoors to stand on a small table, ready to receive our much-loved collection
of delicate glass ornaments – baubles and bells and two fragile glass birds
with long silky tails.
Tiny
birthday-cake candles stood in star-shaped holders clipped to the ends of the
branches, which were draped with long strands of tinsel: red, blue, green,
purple, gold and silver – no tastefully colour-co-ordinated Christmas trees for
us! The kitchen and front room were hung with home-made paper chains and the
tiny, flickering candle-flames on the tree were reflected as an infinity of
points of light by the tinsel and ornaments – a moment of sheer beauty which
tugs at my heart-strings even now.
Finally we made
our way to bed, still by candlelight, and woke next morning to that special
light which told us immediately that it had snowed in the night, snow which wouldn't completely disappear in many places for almost three months. But that
is another story…..
Oh how lovely! When I was a little girl (several years prior to your memory!) we had larger candles on our tree, in metal clip-type holders, the candles shaped like old-fashioned barley sugar sticks. With those and a real tree (no artificial ones then)I'm amazed in hindsight that we didn't have a house fire, but there was never a hint of danger then (nor 'elf and safety to spoil things!!) We always had a huse full for Christmas Day, and played silly games after the Queen's speech on the radio. The year you mention, I was taken up to The Hayes conference centre in Derbyshire (from Portsmouth)in a friend's car for a Graduates' Fellowship conference on Boxing Day, and we had to drive through snow all the way up there - and the only motorway was the M1 from Watford to Watford Gap just south of Coventry. Coming home, through freezing fog, ice and hard packed snow, took us 14 1/2 hours!! Don't think we'll have those conditions this year! Just be careful of floods when you're travelling this weekend. Blessings.
ReplyDeleteIt really was, Helva. I was still young enough for it to be magical. Yes,I too wonder how we managed not to set ourselves or the tree on fire, but we never did. There was something so ethereal about those twinkling flames, though of course the tiny candles didn't last long and we had to blow them out once the carols were finished.
DeleteThe snow came down from Scotland that Christmas, reaching us overnight and moving south throughout Boxing Day. That was such a hard winter and the drifts stayed along the road edges and field walls for a very long time.
Sorry - it was a 'house full'!! My fingers slipped. One of our silly games was in teams - a relay race where we had to eat a water biscuit and blow up and burst a paper bag as quickly as possible immediately afterwards. We were clearing crumbs from the far reaches of the lounge for months!!
ReplyDeleteLOL, Helva. I'm glad I'm not the only one who has spelling mistakes in comments. The silly games were part of our festivities too, though the house was too small for very active games and instead we played pencil and paper ones like Consequences.
DeleteYou paint a wonderfully vivid picture Perpetua. I remember that Christmas very well indeed.
ReplyDeleteI spent it with my parents though I lived in a bed-sit in Bromley at the time, some four miles from them.
Your powerless Christmas sounds quite enchanting at this distance in time but I'll bet it was full of problems when it was actually happening.
It looks as though some unfortunate people will be trying to cope with flooded houses this year, poor souls.
It really is no wonder the British are said to be obsessed with their weather.
I hope you will have a good safe journey with a very Happy Christmas to follow.
Thanks, Ray. My memory isn't what it was, but this particular Christmas stands out very clearly. For us children (I was a very young 16) it truly was enchanting and I doubt we were really aware of the problems. Power cuts weren't uncommon, but an all-day one certainly was.
DeleteWe had no central heating, so only downstairs was warm unless one of us was ill, but that was true every winter and we often woke to find frost patterns inside the bedroom windows. I would much rather that than even a small amount of flooding and this year there has been so much.
Wishing you too a very happy Christmas.
Sounds like a truly wonderful Christmas - I feel another post coming on - it was about that time that my father and I got locked out in the snow.
ReplyDeleteIt was, Susan. I know distance lends enchantment, but this really was special. Yes, it was almost certainly that winter when you got locked outside - there was a lot of snow to be outside in.:-)
DeleteOh, those childhood Christmases! They were special and your electricity free one even more so. Have you ever tried to replicate it? With your own children?
ReplyDeleteWe already know that this year we will sink into the mud as soon as we open the door to go outside.
Rain is forecast and there will be no frosty, crispy Christmas walk this year. We will have to do our utmost to make it a good one even so.
Merry Christmas to you and yours, and a Happy New Year.
I think nothing is better than the excitement and wonder of Christmas as a child, Friko, and the power cut simply heightened these feelings for my sisters and me. We never tried Christmas without power with our children, but we didn't have TV when they were young, so there were lots of games along with favourite radio shows.
DeleteOur lane is awash again after this week's rain. The ditches are overflowing and there's simply nowhere for it to go. Sigh...It will probably be just as soggy in Oxford and Yorkshire, which is where we are spending the festive season.
Wishing you and your Beloved a very happy Christmas and all the best for 2013.
How many memories you have brought back for me...chicken - a luxury at that time; cooking on and in the solid fuel range; the Christmas afternoon pastimes; frost patterns on the inside of bedroom windows and, of course, the winter of 1962!
ReplyDeleteI began to think it would never end and that my feet would never thaw.
Your description of the candle flames reflected in the tinsel and ornaments will stay with me.
Fly, I think you and I probably have a lot of childhood memories in common, being both women of a certain age. :-) It's hard to remember the time when beef and lamb were cheaper than chicken, which in our family was reserved for Christmas and Easter. That winter I had the worst chilblains of my life - all that waiting around at bus-stops in school shoes and sub-zero temperatures. Brrr!
DeleteI can still see those tiny candle-flames and their reflections in my mind's eye.
My dear Perpetua, you have taken me right into your childhood and 'round your fir tree. It sounds so idyllic, though I imagine a bit of extra work for your folks without power. The simple pleasures of games, candlelight, singing carols around the tree, not to mention your meal and your Christmas tea. I'm a bit of romantic and that is the kind of Christmas I romanticize about. Thank you so much for giving us your glimmering Christmas.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome, Penny, I was glad to share it, as I could never forget it. Christmas was always a happy time for us, with games as well as TV, but this Christmas by candlelight was unique and, yes, romantic. I know my parents were profoundly grateful that we had the range to cook with, as those with only electric ovens (no gas in our village) must have had a very difficult day. We did check that our immediate neighbours would be OK and of course most people still heated their houses with open fires back then, central heating not being very widespread in the UK until rather later.
DeleteWhat beautiful memories of a special Christmas. I enjoyed this very much! My favourite memories have to do with snowy Christmases too.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Pondside. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Snowy Christmases are actually quite rare in the UK and this one only qualified because the snow began as the day ended. I remember that my sisters and I spent much of the rest of the school holidays sledging down the hill near the house as the snow was perfect for it. :-)
DeleteI managed to miss winter 1962 as I was born in Sept 1963 but my mother has talked about how hard that time was as she had a bugger of a journey to get to work and was pregnant with my big brother.
ReplyDeleteDespite the difficulties, it sounds like you had a marvellous Christmas, or maybe it was extra special because you had to overcome the major inconvenience of a power cut!
It was a wonderful Christmas, Sarah, and the inconveniences probably loomed large only for my parents, once we'd got over the disappointment of no TV. :-) The winter was a different matter and everyone was badly affected. It was bitterly cold for weeks and weeks and the snow that fell that Christmas didn't melt until March 1963! I wouldn't feel bad about having missed it..... ;-)
DeleteA beautiful description of a truly memorable time Perpetua. I am sure you relived it all as you were writing, and I'm sure you were smiling all the time. I too remember that Christmas....suburban north London did not suffer quite as much as Lancashire, and as I was 7, I was probably unaware of some of the logistical difficulties mum must have suffered...getting Christmas ready for us....but I do remember the ice, and the deep snow that stayed on the ground well into January. Reading your account, I wish we'd had a power cut too ! Jx
ReplyDeleteThanks, Janice. Were you watching me? I was indeed smiling reminiscently as the post almost wrote itself, so vivid are the memories of this particular Christmas Day. The snow arrived as a belated Christmas present and, as you also remember, long outstayed its welcome. You may not have had as much snow in the south-east as further north and west, but the frost was intense everywhere. (Wikipedia says that January was the coldest of the C20th)
DeleteLovely Christmas memories Perpetua - was Christmas simpler then?
ReplyDeleteAs you mention to Sarah, I recall visiting Cardiff in 1963 and the dirty snow was still compacted along the city roads in late March. The Fly on the Web has reminded me of those wonderful frost patterns on the windows, like a wonderland of white ferns, but how cold our bedrooms were!!! Young people today would not know what we are talking about you never see it now.
Thanks, Rosemary. I think in many ways it was simpler. Certainly it was much less commercial and didn't start so early and we got far fewer presents than seems to be the norm today.
DeleteYou're right that young people wouldn't recognise our vanished world, with its freezing bedrooms and little or no central heating. That winter we girts were allowed to bring our clothes downstairs and get dressed in front of the Rayburn every day, as it was just too cold in our bedrooms. But we seemed to thrive on it nonetheless. :-)
Oh, I don't know, I think many student digs still have medieval conditions. I doubt much has changed in the little two up two down terraced house I rented in Exeter with no central heating and poor insulation. We had ice on the windows inside too. :)
DeleteI'm sure you're right, Sarah. I forgot about student digs, though I really shouldn't have, given the wreck that housed DS at one point in his student career. :-)
DeleteHow lovely to read you memories of that time. I look forward to the next instalment.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Kerry. To be honest the rest of that winter was a blur of endless cold and snow and a feeling that winter would never end. If you would like a glimpse of another very severe winter I remember vividly, you might enjoy this:
Deletehttp://perpetually-in-transit.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/great-blizzard.html
What a beautiful memory. I can almost picture it.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Bonnie. I think that must be down to the vividness of my memory, which is still very special.
DeleteThis is such a lovely memory, Perpetua, and beautifully underscores the point so well that the best times are when we talk with, play games with and just enjoy each other. So many of our modern conveniences (most recently these smart phones when people seem to be oblivious to those they're with because they're so busy texting) come between us. I love your memory of this scaled down, but wonderfully happy Christmas. May your holiday this year bring its own singular joys to you and yours.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Kathy.Thankfully we always played games at Christmas then and later and still do, but TV was creeping in and the temptation was often to watch, not interact. On this occasion we had no choice in the matter and to live the day by candle-light was a wonderful bonus in retrospect. I agree with you about smart-phones, which so seem to be addictive for many people. Being an old fogey, I don't have one, so can't test my own theory. :-)
DeleteNow to go and pack for tomorrow's journey to DS's home.....
I remember that winter of '62 too. What a lovely memory of your Christmas. I still cook on my solid fuel Rayburn - I find the food cooks brilliantly even if it does take a little bit longer.
ReplyDeleteMolly, I think all of us who are old enough to have experienced that winter could never forget it. So cold and snowy and so very long. My parents swore by that Rayburn and used it for very many years. It kept the kitchen so beautifully warm too. We have a solid fuel room-heater and sometimes I simmer soups and stews on top of it.
DeleteI was born that year. My mother has always told me that it was the worst winter she can remember, and on top of it, she was always worried about falling over because she was pregnant with me.
ReplyDeleteYou had TV even then?!! I can remember our first, which means we couldn't have got it until years later. My parallel experience of cosy family life without TV was the miner's strike in the 70s. I loved it.
Gosh, Pueblo Girl, I don't envy your mother. It's hard enough being pregnant and ungainly, but with all that snow and ice, it must have been really tricky for her to get about safely.
DeleteIndeed we had TV. We got it in 1958 or 59, when I was about 12, but of course it was a small black-and-white set and there were only two channels, BBC and ITV. BBC2 wasn't launched until 1964 and my parents didn't get colour TV until the late 1970s. The first time I ever saw TV was in 1953 when we all gathered at a neighbour's to watch the coronation. Gosh, I'm feeling old....:-)
I enjoyed this so much. You write very vividly. Thank you for sharing it with us.
ReplyDeleteThanks, DB, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I certainly enjoyed writing it as this day stands out so very clearly in my memory and it was great fun to revisit it in detail.
DeleteHave a lovely Christmas despite the dreadful weather.
Thank you Pereptua, that's a lovey description of the first Christmas I was alive - at six days old, and three weeks premature, apparently I was put in my cot in the warm bathroom of the hospital as there were no spare incubators! My Dad evidently was given lunch and tea at the hospital, and I received a tin of baby powder from the local mayor as a Christmas week baby (the Christmas Day ones were evidently given a £1 in a Post Office book - riches back then). I have always assumed that being born at the start of that winter is why I like snow...!
ReplyDeleteOf course, Catriona, it was your birthday this week! :-) You would have been much better off in a warm bathroom in the hospital than a cold bedroom back home. The fact that the dreadful winter began over the Christmas holiday means that a lot of people probably do remember this Christmas perhaps more than others, but the power cut was the crowning touch for us - a Christmas like no other I have experienced.
DeleteWhat a lovely post. All the pictures of me from that winter show a 3 year old all bundled up in scarves and mitts, and in one my father has shovelled a path through the snow from the front door to the snow ploughed road and I am walking through that cutting, its walls taller than me. I think that might be my first memory, the way those snow walls seemed green-blue as I walked between them. Thank you for the memories Kathy :D
ReplyDeleteThanks, Annie, you're very welcome. The mention of that winter, if not that Christmas Day, seems to have awakened a lot of memories. I love the thought of a three-year-old Annie between snow-walls taller than herself. :D Of course the light would be different down there, but we bigger folk have never experienced it. I wonder if I will ever again see drifts like those?
DeleteThank you for this lovely post. I was 3 years old and one of my first memories is helping my Dad to build a massive snowman in the garden that seemed to last forever.
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed it, BtoB. I can well imagine that this winter would stay in the mind even of a three-year-old. Given that the temperature didn't rise above freezing for weeks on end, you must have thought your snowman was a permanent fixture. :-)
DeleteWhat a ovely Christmas memory! I can just remember as a tiny tot [early '60s] that our Christmas tree had real candles -- my mother insisted! To this day I have one or two ornaments which have survived the many moves and still bear witness as they have candle wax on them :-).
ReplyDeleteCandle light, intentional or otherwise, is such lovely light. We always eat our Christmas Eve meal by it, switching off all the electric lights :-)
As for snow, well as far as I'm concerned you can never have enough! I love it!
Thanks, Antoinette. Yes, candle-lit trees and rooms have a magic all their own and I shall enjoy thinking of you eating your Christmas Eve meal by candlelight. I love the fact that you still have some of those ornaments with their candle-wax. Sadly none of my mother's cherished ornaments have come down to me, though I will never forget them.
DeleteAs for snow - if only......
What a lovely post, full of childhood Christmas memories - so many are the same for me, despite being in the tropic heat of country Australia. The chicken, so special, as we only had it once a year at Christmas when one of the backyard hens was sacrificed. And always cooked on a wood-burning stove (no gas or electric stoves for us). We had an ice-chest, not a refrigerator, but Mum still managed to make the jelly and trifle, to go with the plum pudding. Board games - yes! and we had one or two of those delicate birds with a silky tail - I loved it! Must admit, I was exactly the same age, 16, for Christmas 1962 :)
ReplyDeleteThank you and Merry Christmas.
Thank you, Patricia, and welcome to my blog. I love the fact that our memories of childhood Christmases have so many similarities despite our very different settings. Belonging to the same generation gives us so much in common even though growing up half a world apart. I don't envy your mother cooking Christmas dinner on a wood-burning stove in midsummer Australian heat! A little snow and ice would probably have been very welcome. :-)
DeleteMerry Christmas to you and yours.
Thank you for this post Perpetua.
ReplyDeleteWhilst I don't specifically remember Christmas Day 1962, I do very much remember the winter that followed. The snow reached my home city of Coventry on Boxing Day &, as you have already noted in one or two of your earlier replies, didn't finally melt until mid-March 1963. One of the sad consequences of that winter was the virtual end of commercial carrying on the narrow canals of the English Midlands because boats could not move along the frozen waterways for nearly three months.
And yes, I remember icy patterns on the inside of my bedroom window, the main heating coming from a open fire in the living room...... As I've said before, we are of a certain age :-)
I'm glad you enjoyed it, Ricky. You can only have been about 10 that Christmas, but the winter that followed was so extraordinary that children and adults alike have always remembered it.
DeleteI had no idea that the Big Freeze was the downfall of commercial canal transport in the Midlands, but it makes complete sense. The industry must already have been experiencing difficulties with so much competition from other means of transport and this must have been the last straw. The sad end of a very significant era in the history of Britain.
This is a beautiful Christmas memory. Thanks for sharing. Oh for those more simple days of our youth that you describe here. Even if the electricity had been on, don't you think those days were so much more simple and satisfying?
ReplyDeleteThank, Sally. Most of my childhood Christmases blur into each other nowadays, but this one is still so clear in my memory. You are so right about life being simpler then in many ways. Christmas was certainly less lavish and commercial, with most of our gifts being just small tokens and one big present each from our parents.
DeleteIn this context you might enjoy the post I wrote just before Christmas last year:
http://perpetually-in-transit.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/ghosts-of-christmasses-past.html
Dear Perpetua, this is such a lovely story, filled with memories that must have comforted and delighted you often in the many years since. Thank you for letting me know about it. So many things about the English Christmas at that time differ from what I knew but celebrating and feasting with the family is the same.
ReplyDeleteYour Christmas tea sounds so appealing. So delicious. That you have me salivating as I read!
And the two glass birds with the tail feathers must have truly been like the one I still have, which always took pride of place on our tree when I was a child. I think the bird, which has a clip by which it's attached to the tree, came from the early days of mom and dad's marriage. So probably around 1928. So it would be about 85 years old now. The tail is gone, but for many years it had real feathers that dad inserted in the hole that had held the original tail. Now even those are gone and I simply have the glass bird which is my most treasured ornament.
These memories are so dear aren't they. Memories of security and love and the bond that held us all together. Peace.
It's great to have you back commenting, Dee, especially when you leave comments as lovely and detailed as this. Yes, I imagine there must have been a lot of differences between your Christmas celebrations and ours, but as you say, the most important elements would have been the same - joy, fun, feasting and the centrality of family relationships.
DeleteI love the fact that you still have the bird ornament from your family Christmas tree so long ago. Yes, ours were fastened to the tree with the same type of clip used to fasten the candle holders and they had long tails of some kind of glistening silky fibres, rather than real feathers. I remember them from my earliest childhood in the late 40s and early 50s, so ours can't have been so much younger than yours. I would so enjoy seeing a photograph of your bird sometime, perhaps to illustrate a post about your childhood Christmases.....