So much to write about I have divided this opus into two parts, the second part taking in New Year.

Christmas! What a wonderful word, as a child born after WW2, I hadn't experienced the hardship and deprivation of former Christmases with food rationing and homes being torn apart( literally). Born in 1950 by the time I was old enough to care ,sugar, that great Christmas ingredient was taken off ration! My sisters born in 1939 and 41 actually benefited by having much stronger teeth!

Christmas on the Island was a bit different to the Dickensian idea depicted on Christmas Cards! There were no Georgian windowed shops, no Mail Coaches pulled by teams of horses and I never a Robin on the Island until 2002 ,and that was in the underground car park at Canary Wharf!

Not having a 'high street' the sprinkling of shops along West Ferry Road (three words then) and Manchester Road did their best to brighten up the grey 'bombed' streets that are always in black and white in my memory. Grocers' shops displayed Christmas cakes and special pickles in huge glass jars. Things appeared to eat that you only saw at Christmas.... picked red cabbage, picked walnuts, pickled onions, brown or silver skinned. There was also 'Mincemeat'in jars, this puzzled me ,there was no meat it was lots of different  dried fruits and candied peel with little white blobs of suet, this mixture was the filling for home made mince pies. Originally in medieval and Tudor times mince pies contained real meat with a few herbs and spices. Traditionally they were cradle or coffin shaped pastry receptacles for chopped meat containing thirteen ingredients for Christ and the Twelve Apostles, lamb often included symbolically for the shepherds. From  Georgian times onward the popularity of sugar made the once meat filled pies into sweet filled pastries with just small bits of suet (animal fat) to replace the meat and by the end of the 1800's they were totally sweet.

After the War rationing ended ,and with the return of sugar the Christmas Cakes were covered in the most horrendous chalk like icing with the odd snow man or fir tree ornaments on top. There were also odd looking fruit cakes called Dundee cakes, they were slightly lighter in texture than the Iced variety which was so crammed and dense with dried fruit and alcohol it was like a Christmas Pudding. Dundee cakes were topped with almonds pressed into a circular pattern and glazed . There were also Tunis cakes which looked like soft iced sponge cakes but were always dry ( my father said they were so-called because they had sand in them) - we won one in a raffle! The shop windows were dotted with small balls of cotton wool to represent snowflakes and sometimes there were cotton wool snowmen and giant crackers made from crepe paper. In pre-plastic days most decorations were made of crepe paper concertina-ed honeycombewise into bells and balls that would fold flat for storage they were feats of geometric engineering!

Most people went to the nearby market at Chrisp Street(nearest DLR All Saints). The butchers would hang turkeys, chickens and rabbits outside the shops, all with their heads and fur on (it was awful for a city kid to see, although people did keep chickens and rabbits in their gardens. I never really got it that my friend's pets were potential dinners!  The best thing about  Chrisp street was Woolworths that marvellous Emporium of everything you needed and more. One year I had saved up 19/11, nineteen shillings and eleven pence (one penny less than a pound). I managed to get presents ( mostly talc and bath cubes for my sisters ) Brylcreem hair cream for my dad and Bourjois  Evening In Paris perfume for my mum.  Later in life I wrote about Woolworths in a competition and I won and was chosen to open the newly refurbished store cutting the red ribbon, fame at last!

I loved Christmas preparations at School I went to the old St. Luke's and will write a little about it in part two. The religious part of Christmas was not a 'big thing 'I know this sounds ridiculous but I attended St. Paul's Presbyterian Church, now 'The Space '. I only went to Sunday school and because of the sort of more Puritan Ritual there was no midnight mass as I can remember, and no Nativity scenes or cribs it was very plain. I love the 'smells and bells' of our Church.

The meaning of Nativity actually did come home to me in December 1957..... I was nearly eight and my mother was expecting a baby in January,  I was hoping for a grey hound or a shetland pony, and was a bit put out on being told it would either be a little girl or boy, but such is life! On Sunday 22nd December my 42 year old mother went into labour after helping us lay a carpet. My sisters 18 and 16 were out with their boyfriends so dad was stuck with me and nobody to help. Fortunately my sisters came home but weren't much use as birth and sex education had hardly been mentioned at school then - I remember them crying a lot! My sister Joan went to the phone box to call the ambulance but it was foggy and they couldn't find us. My sisters went through our block of flats knocking and asking for help but nobody could help. I sat in the living room while my dear quiet little dad delivered my brother. He was just going to cut the umbilical cord when the ambulance arrived. We always said he could turn his hand to anything but widwifery wasn't normally his forte. Mum had to go into hospital for Christmas and it wasn't as good as normal. It was a bit like the beginning of the Life of Brian but not funny, very scary.

 In a way it brought home how Joseph must have felt and I wonder if Mary struggled alone with no help, it still brings me to tears as I write.

Unto us a child is born, unto us a child is given.

Have a lovely Christmas, more in part two. Barbara Liddell