I have to apologise in advance as I can’t see any of my future posts before Christmas being about anything else but Christmas itself. I promise I will try though.....This weekend we put our tree and decorations up in the house. Old and new things came out:
We bought this lovely 'Joy' from good ol' John Lewis which never fails to get me into the Christmas spirit.
I like a traditional look to the rooms when we decorate but at a time way before the 1940s and a post-war Britain. In the 1940s children would spend hours making paper chains out of newspaper which would be coloured in and then allowed to use some precious flour to make paste to glue them together. Christmas cards were sent a few days before Christmas — again mostly homemade… stockings would be full of fruit, a shiny new sixpence, pencils, hankies and knitted clothes. There was the wireless for entertainment and card games. how things have changed now!
In the 1950s, the era that I mostly style myself on, there was more colour and fun. I’ve found these photos which I love.
While our decorations won’t be vintage in a 1940s/50s sense I think a lot of people will be having a ‘vintage’ Christmas. In our current economic clime I think people are cutting back a lot more and this is more in keeping with past generations. At a craft stall I did the other month, I met a lovely lady who bought a couple of hair flowers for her niece’s present. She explained that her family stick to buying gifts for each other under £5.
People will be reusing decorations from the past years, certainly when I was little our Christmas tree and decorations were stuck in a 70s time warp and paper garlands covered everywhere.
A tradition that we have come to do every year to get into the Christmas spirit is take a trip to Waddesdon Manor near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. Each year the house is closed and only one wing opened that is then decorated to a certain theme. It really is a magical place and we can't wait to go this year!
Another Christmas day out that I am looking forward to is afternoon tea in London with my mum this week. We are going to try the St-Germain Christmas Afternoon Tea at the Park Lane Hotel served in the stunning surrounds of the Art Deco Palm Court at the hotel. The whole thing is themed around the taste of St-Germain elderflower liqueur. Finger sandwiches are smoked turkey and cranberry, honey-baked ham and piccalilli, and egg mayonnaise with baby rocket, then warm tartlet of smoked haddock with soft quail egg and hollandaise (decorated with gold leaf!) and a milk roll with salmon and dill mayonnaise. I better have a run before we go in the morning...or maybe I should run there??!!
Due to the snow and the cold I've been spending a lot of time in doors and have only just managed to finished watching something I recorded weeks ago. just by chance I found that the BBC were showing a drama called 'The Landgirls', it was worth watching for the 1940s fashion and hairstyles alone. Amazon is selling it as a preorder here, excitingly enough as 'series one' so hopefully there will be another one soon.
On the subject of the forties if you were after a different kind of NYE this year, the wonderful people behind the Blitz party are putting on a special evening. The gin cocktails are out of this world and drinking a champagne cocktail from a vintage glass is hard to beat. I think it's the first time there has been a Blitz NYE party and think it will be truly wonderful for those lucky people who can go.
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