Category: Christmas songs

Driving home for Advent

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Assuming everyone has been good this year, you should all be expecting Santa to visit.  If you’ve not been good, expect your chimney to suddenly develop large cracks in its masonry.

As a child, waking up in my Balham flat, I would eagerly look forward to what Christmas Day would bring (preferably in the form of presents). 

One year I remember receiving the Rupert annual.  I was never a fan of his column (obviously not written by him) nor of the Daily Express in general; they seemed to be obsessed with finding Martin Bormann (the Nazis’ answer to Reggie Perrin). 

I was quite disappointed – I had wanted the Supercar annual and it was on that Christmas morning I decided to invest in a decent pen and start an “improve your hand-writing” course.

Christmas lunch would be held one floor down in my flats at my Nan’s.  She was an excellent cook. Although, in later years, she would mistakenly place threepenny bits in the turkey, rather than the Christmas pudding.  Many a Christmas afternoon was spent at the emergency dentist. 

I was always allowed to have a glass of Pimm’s.  There was little alcohol in it; this was replaced with more fruit than you’d find on a Carmen Miranda hat.  

The evening was spent playing Newmarket, with many halfpennies up for grabs.   I would get very involved and still wake up screaming “Whose got the ace of spades?”. 

Hoping not to get the 2026 Rupert Annual – or his distasteful trousers – this Christmas.

Happy Advent.

Cum on feel the himz

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During my primary school assemblies in the sixties we would often sing, “Morning has broken”.

In 1971, when I was fourteen, the hymn we would sing, sitting cross-legged in the school hall, came on the radio: sung by Cat Stevens.

In the early seventies I regularly bought Sounds magazine – it had all the words of the current hits in.   I would try and sing these songs, but, having been trained to sing in a church choir, they came out all wrong; I made “Maggie May” sound like it was part of Verdi’s Requiem.  

Each week I would spend most of my pocket money buying singles from the record shops on Balham High Road. 

If Cat Stevens could make a popular hymn famous, imagine what other stars of 1971 might have also done?

We might have had Slade’s version of “All things bright and beautiful” (spelled wrongly, obviously); T Rex singing “Lord of the dance” or have Dawn’s rendition of “We plough the fields and scatter”.

The reverse has rarely happened as you don’t often hear “Chirpy, chirpy, cheep, cheep” being sung in many churches – unless it’s “Bring your pet to church day”.

Antlers & Decking

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It’s that time of year when you open your Christmas cards with apprehension.

Will they contain exploding glitter? Will it open to Away in a manger being played on a Stylophone (too soon)? Or will it contain a round-robin letter?  Personally, I’d prefer to have shards of glitter imbedded into my face rather than receive a letter from a frightful family I’d met on holiday in 1968.

Cards are more imaginative these days.  The actual card is certainly less flimsy. 

In the early ‘60s, deposited through my Balham flat letterbox, would be an envelope.  Inside was a card featuring a robin, covered in snow, chewing a sprig of holly; the card also felt like it could disintegrate at any moment.

I’ve friends in Germany and have received cards which, when opened, played oompah music to the tune of Jingle Bells. 

I felt like I was in a Bavarian beer house, especially as there was scratch ‘n’ sniff Glühwein on the envelope.

I’m lucky that I wear glasses as some cards open out with such force, it could have my eye out – and no one wants to be in A&E at Christmas asking for a pretend antler to be removed from both pupils.

And now I have to write to all my “friends” to tell them about how Melissa and Persephone are now doing Grade 4 castanets and the pet Labradoodle is nearly fluent in Esperanto. 

Annuals of history

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Every Christmas, during the ‘60s, I would be given, alongside two tangerines; a handful of walnuts and 2-packets of last years’ dates, the mandatory annual.

Which subject would my parents choose?  Had they been listening to me throughout the year to get a feel in what I was interested in?

As, for several years on the trot, I received the Rupert annual, they clearly hadn’t.  Unless they thought I was a secret Daily Express reader, I was always slightly disappointed.  I didn’t possess a matching pair of distasteful yellow scarf and trousers – if I had been posher, I might have had; but this was Balham in the ‘60s, so that was never happening.

I’d have liked to have got the first edition, published in 1936, featuring stories where Rupert trains with Jesse Owens and Hitler invades Nutwood, with the pretence that there were German speakers living there.

After a while of the annuals still being in pristine condition the following December, my parents changed tack.

The Coronation Street annual was never the same after 1964, as it no longer featured pictures of Martha Longhurst.

I was thrilled, in 1967, to get the Man from U.N.C.L.E. annual – I’d always wanted to be Illya Kuryakin and had, as a teenager, an interest in east European female gymnasts.

My parental procurement of my annual annual stopped in 1972.  Aged 15, you really don’t want your mates coming round to your place and seeing The Clangers annual taking pride of place on your bookcase.

There were some great soup recipes inside, though.

Roy Wood, would you?

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You could have been on Mars for several years and returned, not knowing what day it was, until you walked into a shop only to hear Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is you” and know it was approaching Christmas – or, in some shops, early October.

It seems that Christmas music being played in shops is introduced ever earlier – it does beg the Band Aid question, do they know it’s Christmas?

I’m not sure, while looking for the mandatory bath salts for my mum, that I want Noddy Holder screaming at me; nor do I need to be reminded of the unnecessarily long car journey Chris Rea’s embarking on – move house, Chris!  Or, get an Uber.

Would I, as Roy Wood might suggest, wish it could be Christmas every day?  No, as I’d a. be skint and b. there isn’t a factory providing an infinite amount of bath salts that’s yet been built.

I’d happily rock around the clock with Brenda Lee, except I’ve developed plantar fasciitis – which is not the Latin for cactus.

It’s handy, if you’re looking for a row at Christmas, to know all the lyrics to the Pogues’ Christmas offering; if this is the case then “Step into Christmas” would be renamed “Step outside”.

And Dean Martin’s “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow” would have been banned by the BBC in 1962.