Coathangers for Christmas
Everyone of a certain age remembers it – Blue Peter’s ‘Advent Crown’, a concoction of coat hangers, tinsel and fork handles – sorry, four candles – that the programme’s presenters made every year in the run up to Christmas. You can see Christopher Trace showing how it’s done in this clip from 1965, the second year in which the festive decoration was featured: Here's one I made much earlier
Trace would be gone from the programme within a couple of years, but his Advent Crown lingered on.... and on. In 1967 it was the turn of John Noakes to have a go, and his efforts provided a photo-feature for that year’s Blue Peter Book, ably assisted by Patch the dog.
Even in the 1960s, health and safety was a consideration, with Chris Trace urging viewers to use flameproof tinsel – I wonder how many accidents it took before they added that particular caveat? Even then, those candles didn’t look exactly secure and could easily have dropped off.
He seems less concerned with the idea of youngsters chopping the ends off wire coathangers, leaving some nasty sharp edges to cut little fingers. And exactly how many viewers had access to ‘ordinary 14 gauge galvanised wire’ or even knew what it was? I’d struggle with that even today: do they sell it in B&Q?
The Advent Crown was to Blue Peter what the Daleks are to Dr. Who – presenters came and went yet still the old bit of festive tat was brought out year after year. I suspect they may have stopped doing it some time ago, which is hardly surprising. One forum discussion suggests that the tradtion had lapsed for a while before returning in 2014, but since then, who knows? I’m quite sure that the BBC’s H&S Police impounded the last Advent Crown long ago.
For all the years that Blue Peter trotted out this seasonal tradition, I wonder exactly how many viewers went to the trouble of making their own Advent Crowns? We certainly didn’t, and I can imagine the reaction if I’d suggested it. The problem with so many of those Blue Peter craft efforts was that you needed to plan ages in advance. Valerie Singleton made no end of stuff using old lollipop sticks, but to amass enough to build something like a bunk bed for your ‘soldier doll’ (we can’t call him Action Man, this is the BBC), or worse still, a log cabin, you’d have needed to consume a lolly a day all summer for about two years. It’s the same problem here: your mum probably needed all those old wire coat hangers, and who would happen to have four old lids from jars of mayonnaise or salad cream just lying around conveniently waiting to be turned into candle holders? I’ve searched online and I’ve found only two examples of home made Advent Crowns done by a couple of bloggers. Of course, to use the old adage (that I just made up), no Google hits does not equal zero, I dare say there may have been some enterprising Blue Peter viewers who made their own Advent Crowns (or got their parents to do it for them) without a) photographing the results or b) sharing them on social media five decades later.
There’s one final consideration to be borne in mind: if you buy a Christmas decoration and it burns the house down, you’d probably be able to sue the manufacturer. If you make your own and a conflagration results, don’t expect Lloyds of London to cough up.
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| Light the blue touchpaper and retire to a safe distance... John Noakes plays with fire, circa 1967 |
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