Chris Reeve reflects on festive memories from yesteryear
I was one of four brothers and a sister so Christmas Day was very exciting with so many Christmas presents to open.
Like most other children growing up in the 1950’s, we would hang a long woollen stocking on the end of our beds on Christmas Eve and could hardly sleep for the excitement of wondering what gifts it would contain the following morning.
Some children also put out a pillow case for larger presents, but in our family, after we had opened our stockings in bed, when we went downstairs we would see for the first time the large Christmas Tree which our parents had been decorating the night before and all the big presents were piled underneath.
Our Dad delivered the filled stockings at about midnight, dressed in a red gown trimmed with white fur and matching hat and fluffy beard, so if we were still awake we would believe it really WAS Father Christmas.
Our parents must have had an exhausting Christmas Eve as they had to fill the stockings, wrap all the presents for five children, and decorate the Christmas Tree, so always asked us not to wake them too early in the morning.
The best Christmas present I ever had was my Teddy Bear Bruno, when I was four. He has soft ginger brown fur, bright glass eyes, and if you pressed his tummy he growled.
I played with him so much that his fur soon wore thin, one of his eyes got lost and was replaced with a button, giving him a rakish expression, and his growl soon stopped working.
My mother knitted him a rainbow coloured jumper suit to help keep all his stuffing in, but that is getting rather threadbare now, and stuffing keeps seeping through.
So he is a sorry sight, compared with when he was new, but remains as greatly loved as ever.
On Christmas Eve I provided a small woollen sock as a Christmas stocking for him and filled it with little gifts, toys and sweets, and there was always a little handmade book which I had written and illustrated.
And I got as much pleasure on Christmas morning, helping him open his sock, as I did opening my own Christmas stocking.
Bruno had one particular claim to fame, which related to the Christmas Parties which Margaret Thomas organised at her home, Ellingham Mill.
She was a well-known artist, with the reputation of having her paintings selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition more frequently than anybody else.
The parties were always just after Boxing Day, and the invitations were sent from Sir Edward Bear, her bear dating from the 1920’s,
addressed to her friends and their teddy bears. Margaret signed the invitation cards, as his Secretary, and they always stated at the bottom in bold lettering – STRICTLY NO RABBITS.
On one occasion a little girl with her mother DID bring a toy rabbit and Margaret was furious and made her take it back to the car.
At the lunch party there was always a good spread of food provided by John Groom, local caterer, and when the meal finished we assembled in the upstairs drawing room where there was a table displaying a Christmas cake beautifully iced and decorated by Margaret, and Sir Edward and all his Teddy Bear guests grouped around it.
This was the highlight of the occasion, when Margaret, with assistance from some of her friends, awarded prizes to the bears, in various categories: for example – Best Dressed Bear, Smallest Bear, Funniest Bear etc. – and Bruno always won the Prize for the Oldest Bear, because he dated from 1950. He continued to have this celebrity for about fifteen years, and the prize was always a miniature jar of honey.
By this time, Bruno was getting more and more dilapidated, and at the last party – a very sad occasion, as I was carrying him downstairs, I happened to look back, and saw little strands of straw on every stair.
Yes – Bruno was suffering from that embarrassing complaint common to old Bears – Straw Spill – and was whisked away so that his disgrace would never be known.
My elder brothers and I were given Dinky Toys, little cars and other motor vehicles, for Christmas presents, ( and No! Sadly we never did keep any of the boxes ! ) but when Martin was about six or seven the new Matchbox Toys were becoming popular and he usually got one in his stocking.
There was a big variety of motor vehicles including a double-decker bus, smart limousines, and farming tractors and trucks.
We were all keen readers so there was always an assortment of books for presents.
We had various Christmas Annuals including Rupert Bear, Playhour, Rainbow, Jack & Jill, Robin, Sunny Stories, and I was usually given the Big Noddy Book and Martin was given the smaller Noddy story books.
Enid Blyton was the most popular author of the period and wrote books for all ages.
Terry collected all the Famous Five books, I loved the Wishing Chair , and the Folk in the Far Away Tree series, Martin enjoyed Josie Click and Bun, and Jasmine had the little strip books of Mary Mouse tales.
She remained the best loved writer for decades but fell into disfavour by the 1980’s due to a rather limited vocabulary, various offensive characters, and some of her stories were deemed Rascist.
For example, in the Noddy Books – Noddy Goes to School, one of the ones we loved best, the teacher is called Miss Rapp, because she rapped the children with a ruler, or spanked them with a slipper, ( by this time physical punishment for children was frowned upon).
The naughtiest boy in the school, who was always in trouble and regularly getting spanked – was Gilbert. So this resulted in libraries withdrawing all her titles from their shelves, and the books which had provided so much pleasure for generations of children went out of print.
In recent years she has started to regain her popularity, and offensive characters and incidents are omitted, so Noddy and Bigears, the Folk of the Faraway Tree, the Secret Seven stories are popular again.
One of the books I remember best was given to me on my Sixth birthday and it was a collection of poems – Now We Are Six – by A. A. Milne.
Between us we had all the A. A. Milne books. I remember flying through the air on my garden swing, and chanting aloud the Verses:
When I was One, I had just Begun,
When I was Two I was nearly New,
When I was Three I was hardly me,
When I was Four I was not much more.
When I was Five, I was just alive.
But now I am Six – I’m as Clever as Clever,
So I think I’ll be Six now for Ever and Ever !
Bruno has recently been on display in an exhibition in St. Mary’s Church,
Bungay, which included our toys and books of the 1950’s. Several visitors commented on how worn and old he is looking with bare patches of fur, and raggedy jumper suit. But he has a cheerful smile on his face, the first time he has been out in public, since those halcyon days, when he was the regular Prize Winner at the Ellingham Mill Christmas parties.
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