The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since. *
It will be a very different Christmas this year.
But that is only to state the obvious.
The relaxation of lockdown and Tier restrictions will not make it a usual one. Already the festivals of Eid, Diwali, and Hanukkah were celebrated differently, and this year so will Christmas.
The planned arrival of family from Italy along with our Saul and his partner from Warsaw, will not happen, and given that others of our children work in schools and the NHS, we will not be gathering under the tree to exchange presents or sit around the table for a meal.
Just what the alternative will be has yet to be thought through, but we are no different from countless others.
All of which got me thinking of the last time celebrations in the house were curtailed in the face of bigger events.
And that will have been the six years of the last world war, and the remaining three of the Great War.
I could have settled on any one of those nine years but in the end decided to explore the Christmas of 1940.
December 1939 may still have had some of the trappings of previous years, but by the following year with the war having taken a definite downturn things must have seemed a tad grimmer.
Rationing, and shortages of almost everything, the separation from loved ones, and the nightly danger of aerial attacks will have made this Christmas particularly hard.
Added to which there was the Manchester Blitz which occurred just before Christmas. It is an event that is well documented, and left Chorlton with damaged properties and civilian dead.
In the run up to the festival, the Government had warned that there would be “no extra trains at this period”, and there was “no encouragement for travelling”.**
Nor would local authorities which had received evacuated children encourage “the return of children to their homes in danger areas… [and should] make arrangements for keeping the children happily occupied and off the hands of the householders as much as possible”.***
That said, “normal school holidays would be given for Christmas”. This was in part because the “most schools had their summer holidays curtailed and teachers had been working under great strain”. So “teachers in reception area are to be released for holidays in rotation to enable a sufficient number to be available for supervisory duties when the schools are closed for instruction though open for recreative activities.”
The Scott’s did not have children so never faced the dilemma of whether to evacuate their young ones, but they will have known many for whom such a decision was a real one.
On a more trivial not I wonder if Mrs. Scott decided not to bother with a Christmas pudding, given that according to the press reports “currants, sultanas and raisins will not be plentiful this year”. **** Every opportunity had been taken to buy supplies from Australia and South Africa and while these would be on sale, “the quantity will be limited, [while] other types of dried fruit such as prunes, apricots and pears will be scarce and figs will not arrive in time for Christmas”.
But a little more more encouraging was the news that while the supply of Christmas cards and calendars was “slightly subdued” the quality remained high, . So that while there were examples of "jokes about rations and blackouts along with good pictures of convoys and the RAF and quotations from Mr. Churchill”, there were plenty of traditional ones.*****
At which point I am well aware that this has erred on the light if not frivolous side of the festivities, but so what?
I don’t know how the war effected Joe Scott’s building business, but I guess he will have switched to bomb repairs, nor what Mary Ann made of “making do”.
But theirs will have been a different Christmas if slightly more dangerous than the one that awaits us.
Location; Chorlton
Pictures; Christmas 2008, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and wartime cards “All My Own Work By Grimes, 1944, from Tuck and Son, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdbpostcards.org/
*The story of a house, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house
**A Hard Christmas Manchester Guardian, December 5th, 1940
***Evacuated Children at Christmas, Manchester Guardian, November 16, 1940
****Less Fruit for Christmas Puddings, Manchester Guardian, October 9th, 1940
*****Christmas Cards and Calendars, Manchester Guardian, December 16th, 1940
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