Memories of Christmas past
by Vicki Barlow
• Published 12/12/2022
Ah, Christmas. It’s a funny old time of mixed emotions isn’t it?
It’s a time of celebration of course but there’s always a feeling of previous Christmases' that fill you with a tearful nostalgia of memories, moments and people. Different people have different ways of acknowledging and dealing with those emotions. In today’s blog I’ll talk about some of my own experiences and explore other ways people choose to honour their memories of Christmas past.
Every year we sit around the dining table surrounded by a gluttony of festive fayre. Before we eat, we raise a glass ‘Merry Christmas - to absent friends’. It’s also the status I put on social media to accompany the obligatory photograph of said scene, inviting others to do the same.
Last year we lost a grandparent in November, making our annual toast feel more poignant than ever.
I don’t know when or why we began toasting absent friends at the dinner table, but it has become a family tradition. Sadly the older I get, the more relevant the toast is.
It’s nice to take a moment to remember loved ones unable to be with us at Christmas. Perhaps they are overseas, ill or in recent years grounded by covid. Christmas is a time for gratitude, thanks and giving - so it feels right to take a moment to think of others in this small way.
Some people always set a place at the table for the person they miss at Christmas time. The chair remains empty, a reminder that they would be there if they could and a way to include them. The empty chair concept is often used in therapy, to encourage people to speak directly to the person they have lost.
A popular funeral poem sums up the reasoning perfectly:
Beyond The Empty Chair
‘Look beyond the empty chair
To know a life well spent
Look beyond the solitude
To days of true content
Cherish in your broken heart
Each moment gladly shared
And feel the touch of memory
Beyond the empty chair.’
Christmas in the 1980s
It’s not always who you miss at Christmas that can make you feel a little melancholy, it’s the things people said or did or the way you felt about Christmas in the past.
I have wonderful memories of Christmas as a child. Struggling to sleep, annoying my siblings, sending my little sister into my parents’ room knowing it was far too early and she would be told off!
Recalling these memories can be bitter sweet, knowing that you will never have moments like that again. My siblings and I try to overcome the grief, and it is grief as the memories feature friends and family who passed away, by making sure our children experience the same kind of things we did.
We talk about the moments and people from our memories, laughing at the time our nanna laughed so hard at the table her teeth fell out and the time I couldn’t see over the hood of my new Silver Cross doll’s pram so I walked it into a lamppost. I believe that memories and people stay alive if they are talked about.
Oranges are a traditional gift at Christmas
Christmas memories often become family traditions. In my family, all of the children still get a satsuma in their Christmas stocking. I say stocking, but that’s not how we do it in our family.
When my siblings and I were born, our auntie made a Christmas pillowcase for each of us. Lovingly embroidered with our names and a festive image, the three of us used to choose where to place our pillowcases in the living room on Christmas eve so we knew where to go in the morning to see if he’d been.
Both the satsuma and the pillowcase traditions have continued in our family, my mum having made pillowcases for each of the grandchildren for their first Christmas. The first gift placed inside them (by Father Christmas of course) is always a couple of satsumas.
To understand a little more about the origins of these traditions outside of my own family, I did a little research.
According to an article by Smithsonian magazine, the Christmas stocking dates back to the 1800s. There are a couple of theories as to why oranges/citrus fruit are placed inside the stockings. Some say they were an expensive and hard to come-by fruit so signified wealth and health. Others believe it goes back to the legend of Saint Nick himself, who used to throw balls of gold into the houses of poor families for their daughters. Check out the full story
here.
Christmas can be difficult for people and it may never be as good as your best Christmas memory but Christmas can be whatever you make it. I have a friend whose mum passed away. She told me she couldn’t bear to eat a traditional Christmas dinner without her. So every year they make Indian food on Christmas day - starting a new family tradition.
Nobody should be alone at Christmas and the memories needn’t end.
Does your family have any quirky traditions? How do you honour the memory of loved ones at Christmas? Please let us know in the comments beneath this article.
However you celebrate Christmas, we hope you have a wonderful time.
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