Our\nChristmas began with the arrival of the food hamper, mother had paid for\nthroughout the year. It always contained weird and wonderful things, all\ntreats. A day set aside for making ceiling decorations with sticky back shiny\npaper, the tree decorated, a cheer when the lights worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Christmas\neve building up the excitement, the chicken cooking ready for sandwiches after\nmidnight mass at our local church, the highlight for me, all the hymns we all\nknew by heart. So sandwiches, and bed straight after with our hot water\nbottles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Waking to\nour stockings, mother\u2019s old ones, filled with sweets, fruit, nuts, crayons, all\nmanner of trinkets. Breakfast never needed. Best clothes on, off we went to\nmorning service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once home,\npresents to open, exciting new toys and toiletries, pretty peach creams and\nbath salts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lunch a\ngrand affair, the table decorated, more food than we could eat and damson wine\nin an eggcup. We felt so grown up even though I never enjoyed it. Washing up\ndone, everyone collected in the living\nroom by a roaring fire, parents to snooze, we children to play quietly with new\ntoys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Teatime\nwas tinned ham and salad, tinned fruit, trifle and condensed milk,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Christmas\ncake taking pride of place. The television would be switched on to watch\nthe pantomime followed by Billy Cotton show. I still remember we all joined in\nwith Wakey Wakey, and the Morecombe and Wise show. Chestnuts roasting under the\nfire basket, a sneaky grab of the liqueur chocolates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally\nexhausted off to bed with our trusty hot water bottles, what memories of a\nChristmas in Wales<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our Christmas began with the arrival of the food hamper, mother had paid for throughout the year. It always contained weird and wonderful things, all treats. A day set aside for making ceiling decorations with sticky back shiny paper, the tree decorated, a cheer when the lights worked. Christmas eve building up the excitement, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,101],"tags":[102,103,74],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","category-december-2019","tag-christmas","tag-our","tag-up"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-3l","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions\/208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}