An Edinburgh 1960s Christmas Day

Christmas Day was rather like Sundays, only quieter.

We saw very little of what went on in the rest of the Stair because our grandfather would collect us all mid-morning in his large Ford Zephyr car, with its leather bench seats and drive us all down to Portobello for the day, not returning us back home to Oxgangs until late in the evening.

We always spent the whole day at our grandparents’ home at Durham Road, Portobello.

I therefore have no intimate knowledge of how the Swansons; the Stewarts; the Hoggs; the Smiths; the Blades; the Hanlons; or the Duffys spent their Christmas Day.

However, Christmas Day is the most popular church day of the year, so I could surmise that the Swansons probably attended Colinton Mains Parish Church of Scotland; meanwhile, the Blades will have gone along to one of the Baptist churches; whilst the Duffys will have celebrated Christ’s birth at St Marks Roman Catholic Church, Oxgangs Avenue.

St Mark's RC Church

The drive from Oxgangs down to Portobello from the Stair was always the quietest of the whole year.

Sundays were normally quiet, but on Christmas Day there were even fewer cars on the road and we just sailed down as if we were the Royal Family.

Reverend Walker Skating Duddingston Loch, Henry Raeburn

We drove through Greenbank, Morningside and along Grange Road and on through the Queen’s Park passing Duddingston Loch on the right, always looking out for the skating minister as we assumed it was his home!

On the bad bend outside the 12^th century Duddingston Kirk our grandfather always blared the car’s horn loudly, impishly hoping it was midway through the chaplain’s sermon.

12th century, Duddingston Kirk

We then wended our way down to Nana’s and the excitement of turning right at the foot of Durham Road with its fine small Edwardian mansion-houses.

It was our grandmother who made Christmas the day that it was. She would be there on the doorstep to greet and welcome us into the hallway and we would give her a formal light kiss on the cheek.

Although she loved us all very dearly, she wasn't effusive and instead had more of the demeanour of a conservative English gentlewoman’s restraint. Instead she expressed her great love for family and many others through innumerable acts of kindness over the years and the decades.

The hall looked resplendent. There would be a flower arrangement on a dark antique table and for once the royal blue carpet had been hoovered clean. As a busy artist, jeweller, pottery decorator, lace-woman and gardener our grandmother didn't want to be remembered for dusting the house; instead she had far more important priorities, but Christmas was an exception.

And, because her house resembled the Old Curiosity Shop, full of fascinating antiques and interesting items from throughout the world, the hall really didn't need any Christmas décor. Although, I suppose one could have hung some tinsel from the African buffalo's antlers high on one wall!

In later years I lived there from the winter of 1972 and whenever I invited a friend, a colleague or a journalist into her front room, their first comment on entering was always ‘What a fascinating room this is!’

Apart from the tiny kitchen, her house was perfect to host the large Christmas gatherings which took place there for over half a century.

The hatch linking the kitchen to the sitting room was a clever little idea.

As the kitchen had no work space or work tops at all, the Buchan's pottery casseroles containing hot vegetables were placed there and also delicately balanced on top of the old washing machine.

Grandma Jo had the most wonderful grace under pressure; I never saw her get flustered.

Indeed, when I think about it, I never recall her raising her voice in all the subsequent years that I stayed with her.

The only hint of any colourful language emanating from the kitchen would be from Father working hard as he whipped the cream by hand.

Our grandmother served up those wonderful Christmas dinners through the magic little hatch, year in and year out, until she was well into her eighties, when I took over hosting Christmas as the Laird 'o Plewlands; then at West Mill, Colinton; and for a few years at Moorlands, Dingwall.

The first course was usually home-made soup.

This was followed by the traditional roast turkey; mashed and roasted potatoes; various vegetables; and two types of stuffing-sage and onion and sausage-meat, with gravy.

And despite being a butcher, our grandfather never carved the bird and instead that too was also left to our grandmother; she was very much the matriarch.

The dining table was lovely to behold.

With the eye of the trained artist, the table was laid out with colourful antiques and glassware.

It looked like something out of a Dickens novel.

There would also be beer, lemonade and as we children got older, the excitement of having some Woodpeckers Cider too.

Around the table the craic was good; some teasing-some wit-some awful jokes-pulling crackers and several of us cajoling our grandmother to ‘Come on through Josephine and enjoy your dinner too!’ 

Atypically, she was always the last to take a seat at the table and join the extended family.

There were various puddings-trifles, a mix of milk and water jellies and single, double and whipped cream. However, before we could face our pudding, we children would often go outside into the winter air and stroll around the back garden to help regain our appetites.

'The Wonderful Pudding' Sol Eytinge, Jr.

Grandma Jo always prepared a home-made Christmas plum pudding and we children would ‘ooh and aah’ when the brandy was poured on top of it and lit. The flame puffed up almost taking our eyebrows off.

To accompany the pudding there was both custard and ice cream, the latter coming from either the wonderful Arcari's, Portobello or Lucas, Musselburgh, Italian ice cream shops which served Edinburgh residents so well over the years. 

Eddie Arcari

Because of the large number of people around the old dining table-the very young; the young; adults; the middle aged; the old; and the very old, these occasions were quite magical throughout the decade of the 1960s.

Christmas Dinner, Peter Hoffmann

The age range of those sitting around the table covered approximately ninety years, thus stretching back to when Queen Victoria was on the throne.

Sometimes there would be a dozen or so of us present.

Was it Old Aunt Mary or our great-grandmother, Wee Nana, who always said ‘Now, Josephine...where's the silver spoon...you know I can't possibly eat my pudding without it!’ 

And, when I was very young, her husband, the miser aka Pumpa (our great-grandfather) tried to slip me a penny, which I turned down-much to his amusement!

Once Christmas Dinner was over and before the Queen came on the television to broadcast to the nation, the adults would retire gratefully to various rooms throughout the house to allow their food to digest.

Mother would enjoy a snooze in one of the bedrooms, usually my grandmother’s south facing room, which always had a very comforting and quiet feel to it.

Meanwhile, Aunt Heather would be in the kitchen with her sleeves rolled up, washing dishes in the sink, often with Father giving her a helping hand. Others would find a spot on a spare sofa, put their feet up and place their head on a soft cushion and shortly be happily asleep.

Meanwhile, we children might go out to the garden.

It was good to go out with Iain from the warmth of the house and in to the fresh cold air in the winter garden.

We enjoyed having a blether about our presents or kicking a ball around.

The bare winter December garden had a completely different feel to July when it was lush and adorned in its summer clothes.

In its hibernated state all that remained were the skeletons and structures of trees, hedges and shrubs.

And, as the afternoon coolness descended, and the light began to disappear, I enjoyed the quiet and solitude of the garden and the slightly brooding presence of the season.

All that separated the light from the dark, the cold from the warmth, was a solitary door. It made me think of some lines from Buchan’s The Power-House where the hero, Sir Edward Leithen is told: ‘You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn.’

And then, it was braw to go back into the warmth of the house and the bosom of the family and to be reminded once again, that it was still Christmas Day!

After the Queen's broadcast a highlight for me was to sit quietly in the smoking room at the front of the house. This was the front room, which was fascinating and relaxing to be in, because it was full of antiques, paintings, glassware, snuff bottles and old French clocks.

I sat on the big old sofa alongside my grandfather, whilst my great grandfather and father sat on the large squishy chairs opposite.

There was a large old gramophone come radio cabinet in the corner and a Christmas tree in the bay window.

It was here that the men retired to enjoy the home-made sweets which our grandmother made annually for Christmas-marzipan and walnuts; peppermint creams; fudge et al.

But most of all I liked when the men enjoyed a cigar. I loved the smell of the cigar smoke. It’s a smell which immediately transports me back through the mists of time.

I loved sitting quietly, listening to my great-grandfather, grandfather and father talking and conversing. I always kept very quiet and tried not to be intrusive in case I wasn't allowed to stay.

And, as the light began to slowly fade and darkness fell and the street-lights flickered on outside, we switched the Christmas tree lights on. The lights were a novelty as we didn’t have them back at The Stair at 6/2 Oxgangs Avenue.

In that room, surrounded by three older generations, I felt part of a line going back to Victorian times.

I also felt warm, secure and at peace.

I didn't want these moments to end and savoured the hour or two before someone would look around the door to say that ‘Tea was now being served up and would the men come through and join the rest of the party.’

We would all troop through to enjoy some fresh cut bread, salad and some John West salmon which was a luxury item back in the 1960s. There would also be a variety of shortbread, Christmas cake, mincemeat pies and for the gutsy perhaps seconds of trifle and cream.

By then a good fire was blazing in the grate and one of the nice things about Christmas Day compared to our Sunday visitations was that we got to stay on a little longer into the evening.

Our grandfather would give our great-grandparents a lift back home to London Road, Dalkeith, before then returning the seven or so miles back to Portobello to give the Hoffmanns a lift back home to Oxgangs Avenue and The Stair. 

On the way home to Oxgangs in the car, we would all snuggle up together to keep warm.  

However, unlike the journey down, which was taken in the eager anticipation of a family Christmas Day, moving towards its zenith in the bright winter sunshine, come the end of this most special of days, it was now appropriately dark, as Christmas began to die its death.

Now passing Duddingston Loch to our left, it was so black out, that we couldn’t really see the loch unless the moon was out and reflected upon its surface, dancing on the dark waters.

Duddingston Loch by Moonlight, Charles Lees

And this in contrast to a century before, when Robert Louis Stevenson enjoyed the season and wrote in the winter of 1874 of looking down upon the skaters on the frozen loch flitting around under the light from the moon and the lit torches.

Leaving the Queens Park, we children played a game to see who could count the most lit Christmas trees in sitting room windows along Grange Road, Morningside and Greenbank, before we descended into Oxgangs.

And then, of a sudden, we were back from where we’d started out.

It was of course a stark contrast coming home to the Stair and 6/2.

The house was quiet.

It was cold.

And the one bar electric fire would be immediately switched on.

However, it was slightly more inviting than usual, because the Christmas tree decorated the corner of the living room and we had the pleasure of coming back home to our presents.

Before going to bed I would carefully re-pack my stocking with my presents and place it at the end of my bed to try to recreate the Christmas morning experience when I awoke on Boxing Day.

However, it was never the same.