SEASONAL REPOST - A TALE Of TWO SANTAS...

Christmas selection box Santa

I was supposed to go to my primary school Christmas dance that December night in 1968 or '69 - I'd already paid my 6d - but the thought of having to undergo the embarrassment of prancing about with a bunch of soppy girls far outweighed the tempting delights of ice cream, mince pies, soft drinks and whatever other seasonal delicacies were on offer that particular evening.  The dance lessons in the school hall which had been sprung on us on the run-up to the occasion were bad enough - what with me falling over my two left feet and having about as much rhythm as an epileptic on speed - but the prospect of the actual event was more than I could bear.  So I did the only thing I could - I claimed I had a headache and wasn't feeling well and thereby avoided the whole sorry spectacle altogether.

Later, when it was too late to attend the party, I staged a miraculous recovery and trotted over to the shops across the road from my house and spent my pocket-money on, I seem to remember, a selection box and a selection stocking.  (Or was it only the stocking?  I think it was both.)  I no longer recall if they were by Mars or Cadbury's, but the cardboard backing to the stocking (unless I'm mixing them up) had a cut-out Santa puppet which I actually assembled but never kept.  However, I did snip and save the illustration of the Santa, plus the one from the front of the box.  Funnily enough, for years I had associated this night with also buying a copy of TV21, which I recollect having a fleet of FIREBALL XL ships taking off on the left-hand side of the page, either on the cover or centrespread, but the only page I can find that that fits the description doesn't match the year, so I suspect I'm mixing two separate but similar evenings into one.

Christmas selection stocking Santa puppet illo

I'm not altogether sure, but I suspect the year of the party may've been '69 rather than '68, because that would've been the last Christmas that those of us due to attend secondary school after the summer holidays of 1970 would see in our old primary.  I therefore think that the dance aspect of the party was to better prepare us pimply-faced youths for our adolescent dealings with the opposite sex as we approached the next great stage of our scholastic lives.  In fact, now that I think of it, there was probably a dance every end-of-year for pupils of a certain age.  Younger kids would doubtless have a party with games on a different night, while older ones had to endure the humiliation of having to foxtrot for their treats.

Cut to 1972 or '73, in another house in a different neighbourhood.  My mother was putting up the Christmas decorations and dressing the tree, when I heard her say "Oh, I'll put these up!"  In her hands she held the two cardboard Santas which I'd cut out in a different decade and had neither set eyes on nor thought about since the night of the Christmas dance several years before.  I took a look at them, and at some stage over the Festive period, tried out my new red El Tempo fibre-tip pen on them for no particular reason I can recall.  They adorned the tree every year from then on, and occasionally it would occur to me to regret having 'defaced' them with the marker-pen.  Ah, impetuous youth that I was, alas!

El Tempo Marker Pen

In the late '80s or early '90s, I decided to reverse my handiwork of years before and once again took a red Tempo marker pen to the red areas of the two cardboard Santas.  My careful application had the effect of wiping the previous marks of the tip edges from the surface, whereupon I then applied red Rotring ink to completely restore them to an unblemished state.  A fine craft knife enabled me to trim any excess card outside of the lines that my less than skilful 10 year old hands had missed back in the '60s and hey, presto - my two Santas looked better than they had in a long-time.

I sometimes wonder if anyone who attended the event actually recalls much about it after all these years, apart, perhaps, from vague impressions, whereas one look at my pair of 'selection Santas' takes me right back to that night in '68 or '69, and also another one in '72 or '73.  Perhaps I should've gone to the party, but I can't help but feel that my non-attendance made the evening far more memorable for me than would otherwise have been the case.  And it's probably a fairly safe bet that I'm the only person from school who has two tangible reminders of that evening to help me remember my experience of it, as opposed to anyone who actually went to the thing and awkwardly tripped, tumbled, traipsed and toppled around the varnished hall floor in pursuit of bruised and battered tootsies.

Happy memories - perhaps the best Christmas gift that Santa - or anyone - can possibly give.    

WHAT DOES CHRISTMAS MEAN TO YOU?

For many years I thought this was an exclusive JIM REEVES song as I'd never heard anyone else sing it.  Then, around ten years ago, I bought a CD which had ROSEMARY CLOONEY (I think) singing the same song.  It's a fairly safe bet that Rosemary's version predates Jim's, but his is the better version I'd say.  Just listen to him hold that note at the end.  Pure class.

SEASONAL REPOST - SANTA CLAUS CAME TO TOWN - AND STAYED...

It was 1972 or '73, getting on towards Christmas.  I'd just acquired two different Santa 'cake toppers' from a shop called W. & R. HOLMES, which was one of the absolute best shops in my local town centre.  One of the Santas was on skis and was identical to one once given to me by a neighbour (ROBERT BAIRD) two or three years before when I lived in a different house in another area.

The second Santa was smaller and, unlike the other, was more of a 'cartoon'-type figure.  I had them both for a relatively short time before they vanished into the limbo that inevitably claims most items from our youth.  In 1977, a mere 4 or 5 years later, but seeming like a lifetime (after all, I'd gone from schoolboy to working man in that time), I obtained a replacement for that second Santa in a local shop (R. S. McCOLL's) across from where I worked.

When I was in Portsmouth in 1978 to be best man at a then-friend's wedding, I saw the same Santa in a newsagent's and bought it for my pal.  Why?  Because he'd been with me when I got the two Santas from W. & R. Holmes on that Saturday morning back in the early 1970s so it somehow seemed fitting (even though he probably didn't remember it).  Whether he kept it or not I have no idea, but I still have my 1977 replacement and it's been part of the Christmas decorations every year since then.  (That's 40 Christmases in case you're counting.)

So, in yet another self-indulgent fit of sentimental reminiscing, I decided to give you the backstory just so I'd have an excuse to show a photograph of that little Santa.  As you'll have guessed by now, that's him at the top of this post.  It takes me right back to that crisp Saturday morning in the early 1970s just looking at him.  Long may it be so.

Have you got an old Christmas decoration that you'd never part with?  Go on - tell us all about it. 

NEW FOR OLD...?

I have this theory that, with a lot of things in life, people are trying to relive, re-experience, various earlier points in their history.  For example, those who get together as adults for a drinking-session with their pals, whether it be in pubs, houses, or underpasses, are trying, sub-consciously, to recapture the thrill of when they were teenagers and embarking on rebellious 'forbidden fruits' for the very first time.  Those who attend football matches are, in their heart of hearts, hoping to catch a glimmer of what it was like when their father took them to their first game and brainwashed them into supporting the team that he supported.  (I always cringe when I see toddlers wearing Celtic or Rangers [or any team's] strips, as it means they're being programmed practically from birth in the bigoted ways of their father, determined to perpetuate his own blind allegiance to a football club as if it were a religion.  Sad.)

Not convinced?  Well, a large percentage of kids who collect stamps, or go train-spotting, or build model aeroplane kits, or just about anything you care to mention, still pursue those same pursuits when they're older.  I'm probably a perfect example of what I'm talking about.  As a kid, my interests were toys and comics, and as a doddery old fart mature adult, I still have the same interests.  Not only the same interests though, as I've obviously added new ones over the years to my repertoire of 'hobbies' - as do other people, I'm sure.  Yet we never quite abandon our first ones.  Although I used to buy new comics (not so often nowadays), I still bought reissues of old comics that I'd read in childhood and adolescence.  Take the TRUE BELIEVERS comics I've been acquiring recently - I have those stories several times over, but I get a certain thrill in having them again in a new presentation, and can only conclude that I'm trying to relive the experience of when I first read them.

Christmas is another case in point.  Although it's a tradition we repeat every year, we don't just do it for our own kids (if we have any) or only because custom demands, but also to try and re-experience the magic that the season was once filled with when we were children.  We're probably, without fully realising it, trying to relive our own childhood through that of our kids, and it's the glow of Christmases past which illuminates those of the present.  So have a little think about it.  Every time you engage in a regular pursuit that you enjoy, it's not only to experience the new 'buzz' that it brings, but also to (subconsciously) re-experience an earlier one.  After all, the two aren't mutually exclusive.  Or am I over-thinking things?  If you understand my vaguely-expressed haverings, feel free to let me know in the comments section.

HERE'S HOPING YOU HAVE A SILENT And PEACEFUL NIGHT...

Here's the mighty JIM REEVES with a song that expresses the true meaning of Christmas - SILENT NIGHT.  Just listen to the quiet power of his voice, especially in the third verse.  Truly, one of the greatest (if not the greatest) vocalists of the 20th century.  And his records still sell even to this day, 54 plus years after his untimely death in a 'plane crash.  Merry Christmas everybody.