Remembering Christmas as a child.
We didn’t have a camera at home when I was growing up, so the only images I have from the 1940s and 1950s are in my memory and from friends/relatives (and on the internet!) I think my earliest memory was of one Christmas when we took the bus to my Aunt & Uncle’s house and I encountered Father Christmas for the very first time. I am told that I was terrified and screamed my head off, not knowing that the jolly man in the red suit was actually my dad! At a guess, it was probably the Christmas of 1945 or 1946. My second encounter was a couple of years later when we were in another uncle’s car going to visit my great grandfather. We saw Father Christmas actually walking along the road with a large sack of presents on his back. We all waved to each other and called out Happy Christmas! That was exciting, no tears that time! When I look back, it is a miracle that any of us survived to adulthood. We always had live Christmas Tree...