Welcome to my blog, where I take pleasure in words and pictures, be they my own or those of others. I'm a creative individual, and the crafty side I explore on my 'other blog', Picking Up The Threads, which I hope you'll visit too. I'm sure you understand that I have sole copyright of my original work and any of my contributions, so please ask if you want to use them. A polite request is rarely refused. So, as they used to say on the BBC's 'Listen With Mother' radio programme, many years ago: "Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin."

Friday 3 January 2020

Ghosts of Christmases Past

As this is the 500th Sepia Saturday call and I am a long-term contributor (though I've lapsed somewhat recently), I thought I'd answer with this offering.

This year has been tinged with sadness as I lost a friend in January and then my Mum in April. At the Festive Season I often find myself reflecting on Christmases past. Good times shared over the years with friends and family, many of whom have since left us. It's inevitable as we get older, but we need to remember that these were happy times and the photos in the Christmas album evoke fond memories. 

Mum (along with Dad, who died not long before Christmas 2012) was a star of many a blogpost I wrote for Sepia Saturday, and so I am going to simply share Christmas images of them, starting with a black and white snap from 1965. Their first Christmas as a married couple was 1942, but as this was wartime, and both were serving in the armed forces, there would have been little time to enjoy festivities; there were certainly no photos.  

The 1965 snap is the earliest I can find with any clue that it is Christmas. I know they had happy ones before that, even though money was short. Both were resourceful and creative, and Christmas decorations would be fashioned from found objects, natural and otherwise. They would often join us for Christmas, travelling to Germany when we were stationed there with the RAF in the early 1980s, and in more recent years to Lanzarote, where we now live, for a different kind of Christmas, in the sun.


By 1979 there was a new grandson to play with. The streets were quiet in Germany for Christmas 1983.





We were back in Wiltshire by 1990. Mum sits quietly in anticipation, whilst in 1992 Dad gets beaten at a Christmas game by his grandson.


  In 1995 a brisk walk around the Cathedral Close was called for, and we wrapped up warm.















A look of love at Christmas 1999.  .


















A hamper of treats for 2000.







And the inevitable game of Scrabble in 2003





 2004 was very red and gold, but Dad wore his Christmas tie.  













In Lanzarote for Christmases 2005 - 2009.



















In 2012 we brought Mum over straight after the funeral, so that she could rest in the sun. Being the resilient woman she was, she coped very well and managed one more trip over here the following July. Now she and Dad are back together again, and I'm sure they enjoyed Christmas, wherever they were. They were certainly here in spirit and in our treasured memories. 


Join others for the 500th Sepia Saturday

4 comments:

  1. Hi Marilyn, good to see you again! As you said, the older we grow, the more people we start to miss. But as long as they are in our hearts, they will not be forgotten. And I know they know! In any case, my very best wishes to you.

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  2. Lovely Photographs and tribute to your parents

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  3. Beautiful Photographs of Your Mum& Dad.
    My Bestest Wishes for 2020
    X

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  4. A lovely tribute to your parents

    Happy New Year - greetings from a fellow occasional Sepia Saturday blogger from Australia

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