Three grandchildren are putting their grandparents in the spotlight and asking them exactly what Christmas was like back in the day.
Parenting on Female First
We have a short snippet of their wonderful chats, all of which appear in the December issue of Reader's Digest.
Different Traditions
Peggy Alderson-Popovic, 10, speaks to Peggy Alderson, 90, from Hastings, East Sussex.
Peggy AP asks her grandma: "I love getting all festive for Christmas - the songs, the snow, the shopping and cooking. Was it like that when you were a child?"
Peggy A answers: "Not so much as it is now. Many of my early Christmases were spent in Leuchars, a small village in Fife, and the real celebrations were kept for New Year’s Eve.
"On Christmas morning, though, we’d go out to friends and relatives and have a mince pie at each house. For dinner, we might have a bowl of kale soup - that was delicious, made with cabbage and lamb and pearl barley.
"But the thing you really looked forward to was the clootie dumpling. It was a bit like Christmas pudding - you tied it up in a great big piece of wet cloth and it boiled away for hours. There were charms hidden inside it. If you got the slice with the ring, it meant a wedding. If you got the thimble, you were going to remain a spinster!" says Peggy A.
Wonderful Weather
Tia Forde, 13, interviews Winston Forde, 71, a retired RAF squadron
leader from Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire.
Tia asks her grandfather: "What do you remember about Christmas when you were young?"
Winston replies: "Well, Tia, that was a long time ago and so much has changed. As you know, I grew up in Freetown, Sierra Leone, so perhaps the most striking difference was the weather. Christmas was a sunny day.
"We didn’t have a Christmas tree because conifers didn’t grow there. On the other hand, the palm trees made a convincing backdrop for our Nativity plays! I was a chorister in the cathedral in Freetown, where my father was a civil servant, and it was always strange for me
to sing “In the Bleak Midwinter” because none of us had experienced snow.
"When I came to England in the 1960s, I couldn’t believe the cold and the chimney smoke rising from icy roofs," says Winston.
Family Festivity
Elle Fegan, 12, talks to Renny Cuddy, 66, a retired civil servant from Newtownards, County Down.
Elle asks her grandpa: The night before Christmas is my favourite bit. We hang up our stockings, and try our hardest to get to sleep. We
even have special Christmas pyjamas. Did you get as excited as us, Grandad?
Renny says: I certainly was excited, Elle. But, from about the age of 13, I was working in my family’s fish-and-chip shop. The Christmas run-up was very busy for us. The shop was like a social centre for our small town, Killyleagh.
"As well as the usual customers, you’d have carol singers coming round, and they’d all be given tea or bags of chips - whatever they wanted.
"On Christmas Eve we shut early, around 9pm. Then it was my job to scrub the tiles, drain the oil and wash the chip pans out. You’d be working for two or three hours before you could even think of hanging
up your stocking!" explains Renny.