Christmas Long Ago by Jennie Hart

 This piece of writing first appeared on the blog in December 2022. 

I hear my grandson singing ‘Away in a Manger’ and I want to cry; those ancient long remembered tunes are full of nostalgia.

Early family Christmases were often spent with Grandma Verity in Hull. My Grandad was there too but quietly in the background. Christmas eve was exciting yet I was terrified of catching sight of Father Christmas who may not leave presents if I spotted him. As soon as I was tucked up in bed, Grandma would ring the tiny tinkling bell on her mantel piece a few times; I knew its tone because sometimes, she let me shake it but on Christmas Eve I would ignore the familiarity and believe it was the Christmas sleigh. If I heard a stealthy tread on the carpet, I buried myself beneath the covers until all was silent then slept till morning, dreaming of reindeers and walky-talky dolls. 

Christmas in my own home was hectic and exhausting. Dad was irritable and moody and we never knew if he would join us for dinner. He had a sitting room upstairs where he would play music on his radiogram, read ‘Tailor and Cutter’ and live like a hermit. As we grew older, my brother and I gleaned from his reminiscences, the reason for his misery at this time. He had lived in deprivation and rarely owned shoes. Even after leaving school and carrying out deliveries of medicines for a doctor, he had none. He also told how each night he used to bang his bed to scare away cockroaches. He was abused in his teens, by his older sister and two older brothers.

His mother my Grandma Kitt, was a lay-preacher’s daughter but I never knew her husband, my grandad, a seaman in the merchant navy who died before I was born. They had five children and because of her poverty grandma would pawn grandad’s clothes when he was away at sea. If he came home unexpectedly and found his suit missing, he would thrash my grandma and break up the home. The first thing my father did when he had saved a little money, was to decorate and furnish a room for my grandma. 

Mum had a grocery and sweet shop and Christmas Day was her only day off. Even then, customers came to the back door asking for last- minute items; packets of Paxo stuffing, Bisto gravy or oxo cubes. She was renowned for her kindness and would never refuse a customer.

Boggle Lane was once the address of our shop before the railway came. The house and shop, a long low eighteenth century building, had been in the family since the mid-nineteenth century and is still there today.

Before it was a shop, it was described in historical accounts as a ‘rooming house’ and is one of the oldest premises in the town. The long narrow garden which ran along one side of the house was once part of Boggle lane and the gravel and rubble from the lane lies buried below the turf and garden borders. When the railway was built in the late nineteenth century its track cut across Boggle lane blocking its route, so the length alongside our shop could no longer serve as a street and became the garden. The northern end of Boggle Lane was the other side of the railway and was eventually built over.

Boggle is an unusual name for a lane but it was so-called because there was once a well there.. Boggle, bogle or bogill is the Northumbrian and Scots term for a ghost and boggles were often associated with water. I am glad I didn’t know this as a child because my dreams were haunted by ghosts, because of the tales my father told. He used to tell of a phantom old woman who live in his sitting room and how she had once passed him on the stairs. The door to that room was at the top of the staircase and each night I would hold my breath and rush past it and along the landing, to the safety of my own bed. I once had to sleep in that sitting room on a makeshift bed, when a visitor was given my bedroom, and I experienced absolute fright when woken by inexplicable creaking noises. In the morning it was clear the sideboard door had decided to voluntarily open.

Mum was usually exhausted on Christmas Eve once she had closed the shop. When the cashing-up was done, I used to help her hang the decorations; there were garlands and lanterns, gold and bright and showy and I looked forward to them each year. The ceilings were low and if mum stood on a chair she could arrange the streamers in uneven loops across the small room. They were uneven because she had to feel for the beams in the ceiling in which to push the drawing pins. 

Mum bought presents but often didn’t have time to wrap them. My dad played no role in these preparations except for buying whisky and stocking his cocktail cabinet. This was an art deco work of art in smooth polished walnut but I didn’t recognise its value then. I do  re-call one year wrapping my own presents because of my disappointment the previous Christmas that nothing was wrapped. For children it’s the anticipation of the present within that makes the opening special.

Grandma Kitt bought me the Daily Mail Annual every year and my beloved story of all time was ‘When Father Christmas tore his trousers’. In the tale, Red Riding Hood generously parts with her red cloak to patch the tear and a helpful tree-fairy finds a sewing kit among the gifts and carries out the repair. I recently discovered the story appeared in The Daily Mail Annual of Christmas Nineteen fifty and it’s author was Heather Moorfield. I was only four years old so an early reader, taught by my great Uncle Harry, a tailor who lived with our family. Another year my paternal grandma bought me a mottled brown mechanical tortoise from my uncle’s toy shop; it was pneumatic and when I squeezed a rubber bellow connected to it by a hose, it crawled along in a life-like plodding fashion.

This year, in the strangest of summers I sowed seeds of Origanum marjorana or sweet marjoram, in a sunny spot and once it was leafy and before it flowered, I harvested the foliage and hung it in bunches to dry. A few weeks later, I rubbed the grey foliage between my fingers and inhaled the sweet aromatic smell of this beautiful culinary herb. I learned this from my mother. Towards the end of summer mum would buy armfuls of sweet marjoram from a customer and hang the fresh stems in attractive posies around the kitchen to dry. I loved that magical aroma and for me it foretold of Christmas to come. Mum didn’t use sage and onion to make turkey stuffing; instead she used sweet marjoram along with onions, suet, and breadcrumbs. Some of this was used to stuff the turkey but the rest was baked in a tray in the oven and was called Savoury Pudding.

Savoury Pudding turned a feast into a banquet when accompanied by chestnut stuffing made from freshly roasted chestnuts, butter and onions. Fresh cranberries were also an accompaniment, simmered to succulence and deliberately allowed to be retain their tangy piquancy to contrast with the sweeter meat and vegetables. Usually, as dinner was about to be served, the door from the enclosed ghostly staircase would open. It was never a ghost, just the figure of my father, roused by the sumptuous cooking smells filling the house. He would pour a Glenfiddich’s whiskey, hand round the Sobranie Black Russian (he never smoked himself, just kept them for guests) and settle by the fire. With a whisky in his hand, he became a different person. He was a working-class man with only a weekly wage, but somewhere along life’s path, he had acquired the tastes of an aristocrat. He wasn’t boastful and never tried to impress but had a vision of a life that might have been but which wasn’t meant for him. But on Christmas day, he could imagine ...

                                                      Mum's Shop on Boggle Lane