This series of stories will be titled 'I'm surprised I turned out as well as I did, given my childhood ...' 42

Christmas has always been my favourite time. The anticipation, looking forward to Santa and the presents!

I don’t remember how I found out Santa wasn’t ‘real’ but because I don’t remember, I guess it wasn’t a traumatic event. I never told my brother and sister that he wasn’t real, I wasn’t that kind of kid.

I do remember managing to stay awake to watch one parent or the other (usually our mother) sneaking into the room to leave the stockings.

“I knew it was you, not Santa,” I whispered once.

“Shh… go to sleep…”

Because we didn’t have a lot of stuff, I think we looked forward to Christmas with avaricious delight. Of course, the television didn’t help. From the end of summer, kids are bombarded by an endless stream of advertising for toys to ask for for Christmas and I dare say, parents the world over are sick to the back teeth of, “Can I have,” by the beginning of October.

If ever we got our hands on a catalogue – oh boy! Something – from EVERY page!

We knew there was not a chance we’d get everything we asked for… we’d be lucky if we got one thing. That’s not entirely true, but sometimes, we’d ask for loads of things, a massive array to choose from and the excitement of Christmas and the gifts waned and the disappointment of not getting that one thing lingered. (I sound like an ungrateful brat!)

Over the years, I remember one of my most-played-with toys (apart from my bike) was ‘Tippy Tumbles’.

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In the run-up to Christmas, we’d (I’d) decide it was a good idea to go off looking for the gifts. They were sometimes under our parents’ bed, sometimes on top of their wardrobe, and sometimes in their wardrobe. Ingenious hiding places, folks. I never found them…

One year, my brother and I found the gifts and there was something our sister really wanted. We decided to not tell her what she’d got because it would spoil her surprise.

I’d been reading Watership Down and in the story, there was a tale of a fairytale creature called a ‘Fairy Wog-Dog’.

We told our sister she was getting that rather than the Barbie she really was getting.

Ooops, that backfired… she spent ages looking forward to receiving the ‘Fairy Wog-Dog’ we’d (I’d) told her about. Our parents couldn’t understand why she was so disappointed in the gift of that doll!

Our parents worked late at the club on weekends and especially so on Christmas eve. Sometimes we’d be packed off to grandparents, and here’s the reason for that.

We’d wake up at stupid o’clock, so excited!

The rule was that we could open the little gifts in our Christmas stockings, but we weren’t allowed downstairs. And we were only allowed the stockings if we were quiet so our parents could sleep.

One year, our parents got in at around 4am. They snuck into our room (all three of us shared a room) and placed the stockings at the bottom of our beds.

My brother must have woken up at the closing of the door. He was so excited.

We were making too much noise with the stockings. It must have been the excitement of that orange and the nuts that did it… or could it have been the little plastic puzzle where you had to get the tiny ball-bearings into their holes all at the same time?

You remember those… they were completed within five minutes, then you’d spend another ten minutes completing everyone else’s and then a few seconds of trying to get the ball-bearings out of the casing. All-in-all, around 20 minutes-worth of entertainment.

http://s7.orientaltrading.com/is/image/OrientalTrading/VIEWER_IMAGE_400/handheld-pinball-games~16_813c
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Then the image-swap puzzles…

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My mother came into the room and told us to be quiet.

We snuggled back under our bedclothes and were quiet… for a few minutes.

My mother came back into the room, angry that we were making noise so early.

She threatened to take our stockings away. We calmed down… for a minute.

The final time she came in, she took all our stockings away.

I learned from her mistakes and our kids never woke us up too early. We had to wake them up most Christmases.

Our tradition was for them to wait for their dad to come home from work (he had to be at the mine… more on that later). He’d come home at around 9am and the kids would wait until he got home before they opened the gifts. It was a much better way of working things.

I knew my childhood was over the Christmas I got just clothes.

I had a lovely huge, warm coat, a warm, thick, long-sleeved t-shirt and a new bra.

We walked around to our aunt’s house for Christmas morning – then drove on to my mother’s mother for Christmas dinner (lunch).

At my aunt’s, we showed what we’d got that morning as a tradition. My brother and sister had their toys, I wore my coat, t-shirt and bra.

“What have you had, Michelle?”

“This coat and this t-shirt.”

“What else?”

In front of my parents, my grandparents, my two aunts and their husbands, I was asked about my ‘other gift’.

“I had a bra,” I said…

“Show them your new bra,” my father said.

I looked at him, aghast.

“Show them what you’ve had for Christmas, show them your new bra.”

I felt I had no other option but to show everyone my new bra. Humiliating? Definitely.

A bit creepy? No. It was a LOT creepy.

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