Decades of Christmas Past: 1963

 

Over the next few posts, I’m going to be revisiting festivities from decades past. Beginning sixty years ago...

Do I remember Christmas 1963? Not with any degree of clarity. Aside from fragmentary glimpses, my memories of childhood don’t begin until around 1964. What I do know with reasonable certainty is that my big present of Christmas 1963 was a Triumph Herald pedal car, made by Tri-ang. It was unusual for toy manufacturers to make pedal cars of actual production models, so the fact that they’d chosen to make a child-size version of the selfsame model driven by our dad was felicitous to say the least. I can be seen pedalling it around the back garden in a cine film taken the following summer, which is how I can date the toy’s arrival to Christmas ‘63. Our dad always told the story of how, shortly before Christmas and aged just two and a half, I casually asked one day why there was a Triumph Herald on top of my parents’ wardrobe. I’d been in their bedroom for some reason and, glancing upward, had seen the end of the cardboard carton – curiously, and most likely on account of our dad’s recollection, I can still just about picture that moment. Had I actually read the name Triumph Herald? More likely, there would have been a line drawing of the toy on the side of the box. Either way, I’d caught out Santa – but it didn’t stop me from believing in him.

That Triumph pedal car, as seen in the summer of 1964

The ‘real’ father Christmas was to be found not at the North Pole, but in Lewis’s department store in Birmingham. His grotto contained a posting box for letters to Santa: what more proof did one require? 1963 was very likely the first year in which we made our pilgrimage to Lewis’, to find ourselves in a queue winding up the stairwell to the 5^th or 6^th floor where the grotto was located. Lewis’s Santa was always more convincing than others. Maybe the beard was real? He certainly had the voice off to a tee – think of James Hayter’s voice-over in the classic ‘Mr. Kipling’ cake commercials and you’ve got it. He sounded as if his cheeks were stuffed with cotton wool, which they very likely were. The grotto was always attractively done out with festive tableaux, of which I can remember next to nothing: these scenic distractions provided something to stare at while we each waited for our audience with Father Christmas. Aside from Santa himself, Lewis’s – in line with other Selfridges’ stores – employed a seasonal ‘minder’ to preside over the grotto and ensure good behaviour on the part of the young visitors. His name was ‘Uncle Holly’, and he was done up in hunting green and a white curly wig and sideburns, giving him the appearance of a kind of festive John Bull, although as a child I thought he looked like Hughie Green. Uncle Holly handed out badges to well-behaved children, who automatically became members of the ‘Uncle Holly Circle’.

Having whispered in Santa’s ear what they wanted for Christmas, each child was allowed a pick from his bran tubs – one for boys, one for girls. The presents were usually a simple boxed game, or plastic toy. Once, memorably, I was given a girl’s present by Santa. This was one of the ‘imposter’ Santas one found in other stores, in this case the long-vanished Co-Op department store in Lichfield. Opening my gift, I found it to be a small plastic kewpie-style doll sitting in a pink bathtub. I can still see it as clear as day: the toy came in a thin cardboard container, with a cellophane window. Our dad found this a source of great hilarity, and the incident of the ‘dolly in the bath’ was often referred to in later years.

Aside from the pedal Trumph Herald, I’m not sure what other presents arrived at Christmas 1963. Our dad, who earned a modest income from his clerical job at GEC, supplemented his earnings by playing drums in dance bands several nights a week – activities which he referred to as ‘earning pennies for toys.’A sizeable chunk of this supplementary income went on providing Christmas presents for my brother and myself, and his generosity knew no bounds. There were certainly plenty of other toys under the tree on that Christmas Day of sixty years ago, but the only items I can identify for certain were a pair of that year’s annuals, some of the first I ever owned.

Fireball XL5 Annual was a gift from my grandparents, who would go on to buy me all four editions as a kind of Christmas ritual. This particular volume was certainly well-loved. Within a year or so, its board covers had ‘done a Fireball Junior’ and become detached from the main body of the book, along with the last twelve pages. It remained in this state for years, until I decided to draw the missing pages myself, and stick them back in with sellotape. Today, one could find a copy in seconds on ebay. That annual became as important to me as the TV series itself, if not more so. Fireball was scarcely off the screen during 1963 and 64, but it was only on once a week, while the annual could be enjoyed at any time – including in the bath, which probably took care of those covers!

The other annual I received that year fared much better than Fireball, and was clearly less of a favourite. Indeed, it survives intact to this day, with only some minor damage to the spine to show for its age. Coincidentally or not, the book came from the same publisher as the Fireball annual, W.M. Collins and son, and was an example of their ‘Children’s Annual’. Printed on heavy pulp boards, in the same line and spot colour technique employed in the Fireball volume, this was a collection of mostly text stories, varying between realistic adventure and fairytale whimsy, the kind of book intended to be read aloud (which probably accounts for how it survived in such good condition). All the contributors to this volume were credited in the frontispiece, a rarity in children’s annuals, but none of the names is familiar. Illustrations were in a variety of styles, some imitative of the likes of Arthur Rackham, whilst others had a more contemporary feel. I found some of the drawings a bit unpleasant, and would refrain from looking at them. My personal favourite story, and one which I asked for time and again was called ‘Lost in the Snow’, a heart-warming tale of a little girl who gets lost in a snowstorm on ‘the downs’ while taking lunch to her father, the farmer. The story is credited to E.M. Langford, whilst the line and tone illustrations – in a kind of early 60s knitting pattern style – came from one H.C. Gaffron. The name is unfamiliar, but Google reveals him to have been Horace Gaffron, a reasonably prolific, though obscure illustrator active in the children’s book field at this time.

As to the actual activities of Christmas Day 1963, I’m sure they must have been in line with what we did on subsequent years. Our grandparents would have come for Christmas dinner and tea, and no doubt the television would have been turned on at some point. I was aware of television from a very young age, but a glance at the programme schedules for Christmas 1963 rings no bells. ITV’s programmes began at 10.35 with The Christmas Tree, a party involving Pussy Cat Willum and friends. Christmas Morning Service was followed by the story of the nativity and a half-hour film looking at some of the people who have to work on Christmas Day. Following the news at 1pm, a pre-Crossroads Noele Gordon was the hostess of Christmas Box, an hour-long entertainment. Cliff Richard and the Shadows were top of the bill at 2pm with Christmas Swingtime, which led viewers nicely into the Queen’s message to the commonwealth, at its traditional time of 3pm. The rest of the afternoon was devoted to a movie, The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936). By teatime, a near normal weekday schedule had resumed, with Desmond Morris presenting Zoo Time at 4.50, followed by an episode of William Tell. At 5.45 came a festive edition of the 1960s equivalent of Give Us a Clue – Don’t Say a Word – followed by another news summary at 6.10. A ten-minute address from the Archbishop of Canterbury was followed by Carols, Coffee and Crackers, described as a ‘light-hearted carol sing-song… from the Youth Club of Yardley Parish Church, Birmingham’. Clearly, this one was for Midland viewers only. Regular weekday programmes resumed at 7pm with the quiz Take a Letter, followed at 7.30 by Coronation Street (this being a Wednesday). 8pm brought Christmas Startime, a variety showcase featuring the likes of Bruce Forsyth, David Nixon, Bernard Braden and Barbara Kelly, to say nothing of Mr. Acker Bilk. The news at 8.55 was followed by a reimagining of Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, starring Arthur Lowe. The decidedly un-festive University Challenge followed at 10.40, then at 11.10, a compilation of regional entertainment filled the forty-odd minutes left until the Epilogue and Closedown.

Over on BBC Television, the day’s programmes began in Welsh, before the Queen’s Christmas Message (curiously in sound only) at 9.30. The rest of the day’s programmes included an obligatory visit to a children’s hospital ward, in the company of Frankie Howerd. Tittered they not, I have no doubt. The afternoon was taken up by an hour-long profile of the still living Walt Disney, and a visit to Billy Smart’s Circus. BBC’s film choice wasn’t quite as venerable as ITV’s – Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd was a mere ten years old. Sooty and Sweep invited viewers to their Christmas Party at 5.15, then the evening news was followed by a charity appeal by the Mills family – John, Mary, Juliet, Hayley and Jonathan. It being Christmas Day, viewers weren’t going to escape without a panto, which arrived in the shape of Dick Whittington, starring Terry Scott, Hugh Lloyd and Reg Varney. At 7.15, we had a festive edition of Z Cars, followed by the traditional Christmas Night With the Stars compilation. Curiously, the contents included a segment of Juke Box Jury, and even a visit to Dock Green. Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush followed at 9.25, then after a five-minute news summary, a programme of classical music rounded off the day.

Did I see any of these entertainments? I’m sure the television would have been turned on by the evening, if not in time for the Queen’s speech, but I was probably too engrossed with new toys to pay any attention.

A popular misconception – primarily held by people too young to know better – is that Christmases of the past were often snowy. So did we have snow for Christmas 1963? The Met Office Monthly report summarises the situation: ‘On the evening of the 24^th a depression to the west of Ireland deepened rapidly as it moved north, and associated fronts brought rain to most districts that night and for much of Christmas Day.’

As Greg Lake would put it in his hit single of twelve years later, ‘it just kept on raining.’