Let me get one thing clear from the very start … I don’t like Christmas much!  I’m not going to get into the ‘why’s and wherefores’ in this post, but I thought I would share a childhood memory of Christmas.

This morning, I was scanning through my weekly round up of posts when I read this post by teleportingweena which prompted me to put something down.

Now, I’m going back to the early to late 1960’s. As I remember, Leeds had three main department stores in the city centre. These were Woolworths, Lewis’s and Schofield’s. Woolworths was the everyday store for everyone. If you moved up a class (for want of a better word) you went to Lewis’s. On the other hand Scofield’s was for richer or more pretentious person. But at Christmas, Lewis’s was the place to go.

The whole Christmas experience started around the third week in November. Bonfire night was in the past and people were beginning to think about Christmas. The third Thursday in November was the day! It was the day Father Christmas came to town. At just after 7pm on that night, everyone in the neighbourhood assembled on one of the main roads into the centre of Leeds, awaiting the arrival. By 7:30 it was all over. Father Christmas (never seemed to remember him being called Santa) had arrived in Leeds. The assembled crowd had seen a fleeting glance of the big man as his sleigh, mounted on the back of a truck motored past. Everyone cheered and waved. Christmas was nearly here.

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NB: Regular readers may notice a slight departure from the usual ‘grumpy’ tone of my posts. This may not last!