The presents beneath the Christmas tree had accumulated over the past few weeks. My sister was always asking my mother if she could open one of her presents now, but mother always said “No!” I myself was not as excited as I would have been if I was six or seven years old. This Christmas would also be a historical occasion for us, because it would be the first in our new house. My mother had been getting everything ready for Christmas Day dinner and breakfast.
I knew a fair amount of presents I would be getting, and that must have taken some of the excitement out of the main day. I suppose that another reason the atmosphere was not all that strong was because we do not have a television and all the atmosphere from that did not come over, but we do have a radio and I was looking forward very much to ‘David Jacob’s Christmas Crackers’ which would have an excerpt from The Goons.
I slept in on the morning of Christmas Eve, but when I got up there was a list of jobs I had to do. I can’t say I enjoyed doing them, but they were necessary to make our house look nice for Christmas Day. I finished all my job and the time was my own, so I went upstairs to the playroom and had a small war-game, only with armoured vehicles. The Germans won, but they did have a larger force.
That evening, while we were listening to the radio, a friend of our family called with a Yule log. It was from a pear tree, and we were making this Christmas a traditional one, and we had decorations and holly up on the walls. We burnt a little of the Yule log for each of the twelve days of Christmas and saved a little bit for next year to bring good luck.
I went to bed very late that night because I slept in again Christmas day. I felt a stronger excitement as I lay in bed that night.
Teacher’s Comments
B
(c) M. Robert Gibson
First written 1977-01-12
School exercise.
Don’t forget, it was written by a schoolboy.
It is published here for purely selfish vanity reasons.
M. Robert Gibson 