10. Christmas Presents

Looking back it is strange that that very pretty custom, which comes to us from abroad, of hanging a holly wreath on the front door never existed when I was a child. Certainly we never had one and I do not remember seeing one. Stranger still, we never had a crib in the house. There was one of course in the church, but in those days the charming custom of making a crib for the home never reached us. Today, when so many people give immense imagination and talent to building exquisite cribs which they look at with joy until Twelfth Night, I regret that as a child I never had the chance to build one.

I don’t know about you, but I plan to have a little lit crib in my home next Christmas.

Before Christmas there never seem enough hours in the day to get through all you have to do. First on the list of course is shopping. All my life I have tried to get ahead with my Christmas shopping, but I have never succeeded. I make careful lists months beforehand and by October I have started to shop, but I never catch up with my own tail. You know how it is – something somebody wants which you could have bought anywhere a month or so ago suddenly disappears. In London, where I live, this means travelling miles from one shopping area to another wearing out both the feet and the temper. I suppose if you live in the country it’s worse for it means going from one town or village to another. It’s worth the effort though if you run what you want to earth. You feel as if you had won an Olympic Gold Medal, and when you see the face of the person you give it to all your labour is worthwhile. ‘Oh, bless you! It’s what I most wanted and I was scared stiff nobody would give it to me.’

I got my first watch off the Christmas tree, and you know what a first watch means. I must have been about eleven. You would laugh if you saw it today, it was made of what was called gunmetal fastened onto me by a metal bow attached to a pin. A watch like that was all the rage in those days, just as much in fashion as the latest craze in watches is today. I forget who gave mine to me, but I do know however much of a search the giver had to find it, he or she must have thought every second worthwhile if they saw my face when I opened the box in which it arrived. In fact even now, all those years later, if I flag in my search for a special present I see again my little gunmetal watch and I plod on.

How easy it was when one was tiny. My brother when he was just four gave everybody who had to have a present a sugar mouse. Sugar mice complete with pink noses and wool tails in those far-off days cost one halfpenny each. The only person who did not get a mouse was me. When I asked my brother why he said: ‘I only had four pennies which is eight mice, with you it would have been nine. I like you least so I left you out.’ Even at just four I thought that showed a poor Christmas spirit.

Present buying is only half the business of present giving. Thank goodness, when I was a child there was none of the elaborate parcel doing up there is today. It was plain brown paper and string with perhaps a piece of holly stuck in the string. How children manage today with elaborate paper, ribbons, bows and sticky tape I can’t imagine. They must be exhausted by Christmas Day.