From Christine Bate’s document titled holidays.doc

HOLIDAYS

CHRISTMAS AS IT WAS

Contents: Rabbit fur mittens, chicken for Xmas dinnre, preparations at Council Schoolr Other holidays,summer holiday and other holidays away from home. Bonfire nght.s 

On my usual early morning walk today, I saw several cotton-tail rabbits, baby ones on Ravensbury as I walked down the hill towards the Ravensbury gate to the open space, and other, bigger ones on the road towards the pond. I was so near to two rabbits that I could examine their fur closely and I realized that I could sense what it was like to stroke that fur from past experiences. I thought most of all about the rabbit skin mittens that Great Aunt Minnie used to send us for Christmas, they had leather fronts and fur backs. In Brinsworth in those days, these fur-backed mittens were regarded as a great luxury: most children wore hand-knitted gloves or mittens. My train of thought then went to the leather leggings that we used to wear in winter when the weather was cold. No long pants for young girls or boys in those days. Mother had a button hook that made short work of the buttoning process and I can still recall the stiff, almost creaky sensation as I started out on an expedition wearing them. Another necessary item was a woollen scarf, wrapped around the neck, then brought to the front and crossed over the chest for extra warmth to shield you from the cold. At times it was secured with a safety pin. When one of us had been ill and we went out for the first time, there was always the ritual of putting on an especially warm fawn woollen scarf knitted in ribbing. There was no wash and wear then and a woollen winter coat was always the top covering except in the rain. Since I was always known for engaging in messy play such as slap-dash, my every day coats were washed frequently. This led to the episode of my coat being brought in off the clothes line stiff as a  board from the frost. I never wore that coat again because Mother said Jack Frost was in my coat. 

We never had a turkey at Christmas, generally I think we had a roasted chicken, a special treat. Geoff’s mother always had a turkey and cooked little sausages around it – yummy. During the war some of the years Uncle Donald, mother’s brother who lived out in the country in Low Row east of Carlisle, sent us a box of country food, by the railway parcel service. In it were foods such as eggs, which were strictly rationed in industrial Yorkshire and unobtainable to us the way they were in rural areas in the North. One Christmas, a wooden crate arrived and was left unopened until we were all assembled. When the box was opened by Father, it contained nothing but wood shavings. All the food had  been taken, including a chicken. However, early in the next summer I was playing in the coal house where the box had been put to use for kindling. I poked around in the box and found an egg. We broke it into a saucer and it had not gone bad so I made a cake  with the egg: a great treat in those days.  

I have been thinking about the way Christmas was anticipated and yet still remained special for us rather that the rather weary feelings I have these days after Christmas activities have been going  on from the day after Thanksgiving. Christmas day is anticlimactic.

The first hint of the approach of Christmas was at school, but all the activities were in preparation, for instance making decorations to be hung just before the school holiday began.

Infant school Christmas tree. Lighting the gas while we did our work in the afternoon. Teacher who wore an overall.

Rotherham market, Woolworths shopping. The Coop. 

Write more about Low Row.

Christmas

Our toys apparently were stored in Mrs. Foster’s box room. They ate the mince pies and drank sherry then left one glass  and a plate with mince pie crumbs on. Pillowcases, sugar pig and an orange right at the bottom.

Holidays at Beckfoot.

In my album of photos that Mother gave me as she cleared her house, there’s a photograph of Father standing in the distance with Sheila and me beside him, lined up on a road that is entirely featureless until, way in the distance, a few houses can be seen. Not  taken by a skilled photographer, with the subjects way too far in the distance, it is a remarkable vignette showing this rural scene (?) and capturing the atmosphere early in the morning on that fresh summer day that began our holiday.  This was Beckfoot where we spent two wonderful holidays in the years before 1939. I can remember going out that first morning into the clear air. It was quiet and smelled of fresh vegetation and no one else was to be seen. On the house side of the road, there were hedges and fields and across at the other side was the unfenced expanse of short grass, gorse bushes and sand dunes leading to the shore of the Solway Firth. 

After Mother had scarlet fever in the winter of 1936, she needed a long period of recovery. She was easily tired and, according to the doctor, had a weak heart. The following summer Mother was still convalescent and my parents decided to have a very quiet week at the shore before our usual visit to Carlisle and all our relatives.

After consulting the “Rooms to let” column of the Cumberland News, they decided to answer Mrs. Wannop’s advertisement. We rented the rooms, ordered the food we wanted and Mrs. Wannop bought the groceries and cooked for us. The house was just across the small coast road that ran between Maryport and . 

Bonfire night. Mischief night and Father’s stories about Dalston tricks. 

Outline

Earliest memories

Preparation

 The day

After the day

Mother’s stories about Christmas at Cardewlees.

Christmas during the war

Early marriage Chrismases 

Holidays in Carlisle

Blackpool

Beckfoot and Allonby

Railway excursions

Granda’s beekeeping