I came across this box at the back of the cupboard in my bedroom yesterday.
It was my mum’s, one of several that once lived in her dressing table drawer.
I thought as I unearthed it – “oooh, that’s pretty!”
It is covered with vintage Christmas paper, probably from the 1960s I’m guessing.
I opened it and inside was one of my dad’s old silk handkerchiefs, and some mother of pearl buttons.
Why exactly they had ended up in there, and why those particular buttons had been singled out for special treatment rather than being added to one of mum’s numerous button jars, is anyone’s guess.
That little box, with it’s peeling sellotape and random contents, suddenly took me back to the Christmases of my childhood. As did a tv programme I watched the other night, where a family, by means of era-appropriate furnishings, gifts, props and foodstuffs, experienced Christmas as it was in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
It made me think about traditions, and time passing, and how doing certain things every Christmas, because it seems like you always have and always will, somehow keeps those who are gone, present.
My dad died in 2005, and my mum in 2007.
On Christmas day I will be pouring some of my dad’s Bols Apricot Brandy over my Christmas pudding (I still have two thirds of an inherited bottle in the cupboard) and hopefully, at some point, watching The Wizard of Oz, and The Snowman (and crying at the end), and dancing around the living room to Abba.
Because somewhere inside, every Christmas, I become a child again.
And I miss my mum and dad. ♥
Aaah, brought a tear to my eye, this is so true. I still put the rather faded fairy that my mum made on the top of the tree. Miss those I have shared Christmas with and these little traditions help a lot. Every year when I get her out of the Xmas box I think I should redress her but somehow I can’t quite bring myself to do it, so she remains as she was over fifty years ago.
I know what you mean Rosemary. The little traditions come to represent so much, don’t they?
My mother died when I was 23. My dad promptly sold the family home, throwing out almost everything of sentimental value to us kids, and buggered off to Spain to live. I’ve never felt I experienced Christmas properly after that… I’d be so happy to have something to remind me!
Ahh, that’s hard Kate. So sorry. I feel very lucky to have had such a lovely childhood, the product of my mum’s less than ideal situation. Her mum died when she was 11, her dad immediately remarried to a woman who was jealous of any affection he showed my mum, and she ended up going to live with an aunt and uncle miles away. She was determined to give her own children a happy childhood and I was the beneficiary of that.
God Bless you. Have a really wonderful Christmas xxx