[Veggiepatch]

Awwwpoor little fella

@Suzanne rose knows him too! She probably knows the street as well.

 

[Suzanne rose]

@Suzanne rose knows him too! She probably knows the street as well.

I do know the street I only walked past there on Wednesday

 

[Suzanne rose]

My Nana also use to make puddings with Sixpences and Threepences. Because us kids (well then we were kids) did not like plum pudding, she use to make a pudding specially for the kids with Sixpences and Threepences in it. I loved my Nana.

My nan used to do this every Christmas, a sixpence in a plum pudding.

I make fruit cake and place a $2 coin wrapped in foil .

I'm married to a Greek and they do similar for New years day but with a cake/ bread. I make it each year . You cut the first piece for the house. Then one piece each person and whoever gets the money is supposed to have luck for the year. I always wrap a $20 note in foil and pop it into the cake before it's baked

 

[Littleboy8]

My nan used to do this every Christmas, a sixpence in a plum pudding.

I make fruit cake and place a $2 coin wrapped in foil .

I'm married to a Greek and they do similar for New years day but with a cake/ bread. I make it each year . You cut the first piece for the house. Then one piece each person and whoever gets the money is supposed to have luck for the year. I always wrap a $20 note in foil and pop it into the cake before it's baked

Now that’s whats known as hot

 

[Jewel.]

My most vivid memory of a Christmas was when I was 6. We lived in UK and my parents had made the difficult decision to move to Australia away from everyone they knew for a better life. ( it worked).
We always had Christmas at my mums parents (adoptive) home. Two storey house with a huge bay window where the tree always stood.
All the extended family came.
This last Christmas was extra special as it snowed for our last hoorah!
I still remember the warmth of all the family and (fire) around us and the love you can only get from family.
Most of that family is now flying with the Angels but I will always remember how they made us feel that yr. Yes! Even 6 yr olds have memories of such.
I would love to reenact that Christmas again with my own family in my bay window. But with 9 adult kids and 17 grandchildren they won’t all fit in our house. Lol.
Plus there is always a few that spend Christmas with their in-laws because of tradition.
But my wish is still there.

 

[Sue Cook]

My mother would fill a pillow case full of a lot of things
Ken Stubbs

 

[tycoon6]

Most memorable. It was 1987 at a forward base on the Caprivi Strip during the Angolan Bush War. My MAOT Team and I was stationed over Christmas here. We had a great Christmas lunch supplied by the base OC, however the whole base developed stomach problems (the pork was off and I didn't eat pork at that stage), and I ended up having to CASEVAC everyone except myself and another team member, which left the two of us on the base for the night. So that left the remaining beers, champagne and wine for us.

 

[Veggiepatch]

Most memorable. It was 1987 at a forward base on the Caprivi Strip during the Angolan Bush War. My MAOT Team and I was stationed over Christmas here. We had a great Christmas lunch supplied by the base OC, however the whole base developed stomach problems (the pork was off and I didn't eat pork at that stage), and I ended up having to CASEVAC everyone except myself and another team member, which left the two of us on the base for the night. So that left the remaining beers, champagne and wine for us.

A bit of bad luck for your comrades.

 

[tycoon6]

Veggiepatch, yes unfortunately, but everyone was okay after treatment and a night at the Oshikati and Ondangwa medical bases.

 

[KezzaGC]

We are so excited to launch our November Competition which is open to ALL SDC MEMBERS.

This one is extra special because it’s Christmas-themed for the holidays, AND we are drawing it in the first week of December, so the winner can use their $100 voucher to either Coles, Woolies, or IGA to help with the Christmas shopping!

Entering the competition is simple! We want to hear about your favourite Christmas memories. It can be any Christmas you remember. Maybe it was your childhood Christmas. Or maybe it was last year’s Christmas. Whatever it was, we want to hear about it!

Our favourite submission will win a $100 voucher to Coles, Woolworths or IGA.

We ran this competition last year and it was so beautiful to read the replies.

So, members, it’s time to get into the Christmas Spirit!

Entries close Thursday, November 30th 11:59 pm.

View attachment 33104

Image Credit: Shutterstock

My favourite memories growing up were on Boxing Day we would travel to Woy Woy (from Sydney) to spend the day with my dad’s family including parents, sister, aunties, uncles, cousins at his aunty’s house. She had lost her husband in WW2. It was a huge affair with all families bringing food to share. There was back yard cricket, riding bikes, brushing my cousin’s beautiful long red hair. As we all got older and had families the get together grew smaller. We were fortunate that we did it one last time before my Aunty passed. This is one of the photos from the day.

 

[Veggiepatch]

View attachment 33896
My favourite memories growing up were on Boxing Day we would travel to Woy Woy (from Sydney) to spend the day with my dad’s family including parents, sister, aunties, uncles, cousins at his aunty’s house. She had lost her husband in WW2. It was a huge affair with all families bringing food to share. There was back yard cricket, riding bikes, brushing my cousin’s beautiful long red hair. As we all got older and had families the get together grew smaller. We were fortunate that we did it one last time before my Aunty passed. This is one of the photos from the day.

I bettcha you're the one on the left at the front!

 

[goodies2931]

Way back in the fifties I found my first 2 wheeler bike under the tree!!! We lived in a high Queenslander with twenty steps down to the back yard. As no one was out of bed, I rode it down the back steps with much glee! I suffered the bollicking I received from Dad and was not allowed to ride it for a week!!!

 

[Littleboy8]

Way back in the fifties I found my first 2 wheeler bike under the tree!!! We lived in a high Queenslander with twenty steps down to the back yard. As no one was out of bed, I rode it down the back steps with much glee! I suffered the bollicking I received from Dad and was not allowed to ride it for a week!!!

Hahahahayou idiot wonder you didn’t break your frigging neck

 

[Starry]

23rd January 1946, a truck arrives at Bulli Caravan Park. Out piles my family, Grandparents, Parents, Uncles and Aunts and a few Cousins. The men start raising the 2 large army tents and the women start bringing in the food. It will be the best Christmas ever for 15 month ME. For the next 2 days, Christmas dinner is sorted out from what we all have bought and packed in ice. Our Uncles takes us down to the beach to paddle and Uncle Al catches a small shark, and he puts it back. We do not tell the adults!! We stay till New Years Day and then pack up the truck and back home to Sydney with me sitting on Dad's lap in the front seat. Hopefully to return next year.

 

[Veggiepatch]

23rd January 1946, a truck arrives at Bulli Caravan Park. Out piles my family, Grandparents, Parents, Uncles and Aunts and a few Cousins. The men start raising the 2 large army tents and the women start bringing in the food. It will be the best Christmas ever for 15 month ME. For the next 2 days, Christmas dinner is sorted out from what we all have bought and packed in ice. Our Uncles takes us down to the beach to paddle and Uncle Al catches a small shark, and he puts it back. We do not tell the adults!! We stay till New Years Day and then pack up the truck and back home to Sydney with me sitting on Dad's lap in the front seat. Hopefully to return next year.

That sounds like great fun!!!

 

[BerniceFisher]

Our beautiful little Ethan

 

[Veggiepatch]

Our beautiful little Ethan

G'day little fella! What a cutie!

 

[Doctor Alan]

Christmases I’ve Had
It was last night at the local Club where we take part in the Trivia challenge every Tuesday. While we waited for our ‘partners’ to arrive, my wife started chatting to some people on a nearby table, as is her wont. She ended up with an agreement we’d all have a Christmas dinner at ‘our place’. It was a simple arrangement by two fairly isolated couples to stoke up the fires of conviviality in an increasingly isolationist world. It would be a fun Christmas. There’d be crackers and probably a cold meat salad, lots of talk and fun, and we’d probably end up playing Scrabble.

I couldn’t help thinking of other Christmases I’ve had, especially when we were younger.

In England it was a time for the family to gather round the fire and roast chestnuts after a busy Christmas dinner that took no account of calories. It wasn’t always raining outside, but always much cosier to be indoors. In the South of England it didn’t usually snow until mid-January. In those days it was a chance for Grandad and Grandma to meet the Grand-kids again and for everybody to ‘catch up’. I’d make jokes – always the clown - and used to love it when I could make people laugh, but that’s another story. I think it was just after our Christmas dinner (lunch) that we would descend on the tree and open all the presents that relations had sent. We soon learnt to be ‘ecstatic’ with whatever it was! Nowadays we just hope that somebody kept a receipt!

Christmas morning had been spent sneaking out to open our ‘stockings’ and find all the ‘goodies’ therein. Quite often at that time (when I was about nine years old) there was a sort of cardboard container of ‘truffles’, which I believe were a very sweet candy. Needless to say most of them were gone before breakfast. My older brother and I usually had very similar presents, being only 2 years apart, but our younger brother had different things. Where we both had buffer stops or rolling stock for our model train sets, our younger brother would receive another animal for his model farm. If there was a torch in the stocking it was usually quite well used before breakfast!

Shortly after dinner the ‘oldies’ used to have a ‘nap’ in the chair, and we had to be quiet. It was a pattern that would repeat itself even if we had Christmas dinner at the Grandies’ place. (There I go using modern expressions again!).

Our most memorable Christmases though, were those in which my parents took us on the train up to London. There used to be a store there called ‘Gamages’, and they always put on a wonderful display. We’d be all rugged up in a gabardine rain-coat, scarf and so on, and we’d go up to the 3rd floor or whatever, and queue up to go on ‘Santa’s Sleigh’ to his ‘Grotto’. I can’t remember whether the sleigh actually moved, or we were treated to a scene of tiny houses moving ‘below’ us, but the effect was magical. When we got out of the sleigh, we queued again and sat on Santa’s knee (Not a problem in those days!) while he listened to ‘what we want for Christmas’. I don’t think my parents had an awful lot of money, but we really appreciated this outing.

After we moved to Australia, it was just us and the kids. Christmas is really their time, and we always got a lot of pleasure from that. Of course, Christmas in Australia is a lot different from that in England – or ‘the UK’ as it’s now called.

Our holidays to the UK always seemed to be around Christmas time, so it was quite a ‘climate lag’ to have to descend into freezing temperatures after coming out of our balmy climate. Of course, when they were around, our parents made a big fuss of the kids, and we felt they were really spoilt over Christmas. However, we could never re-create the old Christmases of our childhood somehow. They were simply a wonderful memory. I do remember the kids making ‘snow angels’ in the Black Forest on one of our trips though.

We’d been in Oz for quite a few years before it really hit home how different, and wonderful, Christmas can be in this fabulous climate. We were relaxing in our lovely back-yard swimming pool under a large umbrella in the moulded seat area around a small table, eating cold turkey sandwiches and drinking cider, with a warm breeze blowing across our tanned torsos. The teenage children of ours were happily splashing about in the pool with some of their friends. Bliss!

I thought: “This is really what Christmas is all about!”
Alan G.

 

[zzredbeard]

My best Xmas day was in 1973 I was 10 yrs old my mum and dad had separated and mum had no money, I know she would not be able to buy me and my 2 sisters anything for Xmas but when Xmas morning roll around there was presents under the small tree, we were so happy. I found out later that mum had been skipping meals for months to save money to give us a little happiness on Xmas day, to this day I've never let on that I had know but my mum was and still is the best and at 83 yrs old she still try's to give us something even though she can't afford it I love her for that.

 

[Littleboy8]

My best Xmas day was in 1973 I was 10 yrs old my mum and dad had separated and mum had no money, I know she would not be able to buy me and my 2 sisters anything for Xmas but when Xmas morning roll around there was presents under the small tree, we were so happy. I found out later that mum had been skipping meals for months to save money to give us a little happiness on Xmas day, to this day I've never let on that I had know but my mum was and still is the best and at 83 yrs old she still try's to give us something even though she can't afford it I love her for that.

for your mum