I don’t remember Santa Claus ever letting us down on Christmas Day. He always read my Christmas list which we wrote and sent up the chimney so he got it. My Scotland strip… my bike… my guitar, piled on the couch every year without fail. And he left evidence of his visit when he left his sooty prints on the fireplace and drunk his dram and ate half a mince pie. Mind you, Rudolph always finished his carrot.
And then there was Christmas dinner when my Dad would get his pasting table (for pasting wallpaper) which accommodated us and a couple of aunts and uncles. The great smells and all of the windows steaming up meant we were in for a feast. Crackers pulled, the main course done, out came the clootie dumpling. We didn’t have Christmas pudding in Ayrshire, well certainly not in my house, and that’s when we started looking for the sixpences hidden away in the dumpling; carefully searching the crumbs and always finding one or two. And believe it or not, not one of us choked on any of the coins! Note, before health and safety!
Later in life, as a Dad, I remember helping Santa build the Ghostbusters’ garage, which took the best part of three hours to assemble and a lot of swear words! On Christmas morning my job was to go down and see if Santa had visited … “Santa’s been!” Then the boys would rush down the stairs to see what they had got. But of course, the joy of seeing the excitement of your own children as the opened presents was just magic. The same excitement I felt opening my presents as a boy.
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