Seventy years ago - 1953, the year of the Queen's Coronation at Westminster Abbey, a year in which the economy was still recovering from the war - how did Scots celebrate Christmas?
There are interesting parallels, perhaps, with 2023, a year in which we also witnessed a Coronation, a year in which money was tight, with the economy still feeling the effects of the pandemic lockdown.
Rationing in December 1953 was all but at an end, with restaurateurs competing for a slice of the booming trade being enjoyed by the catering trade.
How the 1953 Coronation was marked in Scotland
"Menus of pre-war size are being brought back, new dishes introduced, and cooking standards tightened up, all towards the same end - to entice the growing number of people who are having meals out", reported the Evening Times on December 8 that year.
"Remarkable as it may seem, considering the tightness of money, more people are eating in restaurants now than before the war. Despite the fact that the average cost of a meal in [Glasgow] has risen by more than 100 per cent since 1939, caterers' returns to the Ministry of Food continue to grow bulkier every month".
Habit was a key reason for this trend. During the war, people seeking to augment their often meagre rations flocked to cafes, snack bars and restaurants. The war may have been over for eight years, but the habit had stuck.
Was Queen's 1953 Coronation one of the most impressive ever?
Other reasons? People who lived in the housing schemes on the city's outskirts had to take a meal in town, thanks to the travelling times involved, if they wanted to see a film or a theatre show in the city. And, generally, there were gallant husbands who wanted to give their wives a break from the "appetite-destroying business of preparing meals at home".
Restaurateurs also recognised that customers were becoming more fastidious about the quality of meals when they ate out. The lack of choice and quality, a legacy of the war and the post-war years, was fading.
At the upmarket R.W.Forsyth store in Glasgow's Renfield Street, a cocktail stand with shaker, three measures, a cherry jar, corkscrew, bottle-opener, lemon squeezer, six cherry picks and a recipe book, could be yours for £26.10, while a ladies' 'Luxan Hide Jewel Case', with side extending trays and gilt locks, was £17.7.6. A double-handled pigskin handbag retailed at £22.10. "For very special giving", ran the alluring wording of at least one Forsyth advertisement. Watt Brothers, on Sauchiehall Street, had a 'Christmas Nylons' sale on Saturday, December 12.
Cinema gift vouchers for cinemas, a scheme launched at the end of November, had caught on faster in England than in Scotland but there were signs that Scots were buying them in substantial numbers. The vouchers covered not just admission to the picture-house but a meal in the cinema's restaurant, refreshments and chocolates.
1954: Interesting reading in the Christmas mail
Buying the perfect gift for children vexed adults as much as it does today, the Glasgow Herald's TV critic making the observation that "many grown-ups roaming the toy shops ... stop short in the sudden realisation that they know little or nothing of what a child really likes".
Meccano sets, Dinky cars and lorries, Hornby-Dublo electric trains and Hornby clockwork trains were on sale at such places as Wylie Hills and the Clyde Model Dockyard, both in the Argyll Arcade, and the Clydesdale Rubber Co. at 23 Gordon Street. The list of Glasgow and West of Scotland stockists of Meccano was a long one indeed.
Then as now, some parents wondered about perpetuating the Santa Claus legend for their young children. "Where my own children are concerned I am in a dilemma: we started it and now there seems nothing for it but to let it run its course", wrote Elizabeth Devine in the Glasgow Herald.
In Edinburgh meantime, it was reported that councillor Herbert Brechin, chairman of the education committee, was having to appear at 37 school Christmas parties in the space of three days - and that he had to make a speech at each one.
Those Were The Days: Carol singing at Blair's Engineering Works, 1953
Women wondering what to wear during the festivities received some advice from the Evening Times on December 10: "Christmas and party prettiness go hand-in-hand, so let's forget about being practical and concentrate on being entrancing". Hair ornaments - "something very new, very sweet" - were recommended by Meg Munro.
As ever, pantos were big business. Those in Glasgow included Puss in Boots, at the Royal, with Jimmy Logan and Harry Gordon; Babes in the Wood at the Alhambra, with Alec Finlay, Jack Anthony, Robert Wilson and Duncan Macrae; and Dick Whittington, at the Pavilion, with Denny Willis and Joyce Goulding. The Kelvin Hall's Grand International Circus was drawing in big crowds on a daily basis.
The city's dancehalls - the Albert, Barrowland, the Plaza, the F&F, the Dennistoun Palais, the Berkeley, the Windsor - all did especially well at this time of year. The last-named staged a Christmas gala dance on Christmas Day, running from 8pm to 1am; admission was four shillings, and patrons could expect "balloons, paper hats, novelties and prizes". The Albert was reopening after an extensive redecoration.
Friday, Christmas Day, 1953 came and left with the traditional array of parties, celebrations and too much food. Real life, however, intruded as ever. The Queen's Christmas message to the Commonwealth touched on a railway disaster on New Zealand's North Island on Christmas Eve, in which 151 people lost their lives. The Queen was in New Zealand at the time, and made her address from a desk at Government House, Auckland, some 12,000 miles from the Royal Family's customary Christmas retreat at Sandringham.
In his own festive message, US President Dwight Eisenhower noted that this Christmas “is truly a season of goodwill, and our first peaceful one since 1949”.
Closer to home, Glasgow's bus and tram network was paralysed by a 24-hour Boxing Day strike by Corporation workers. Eight hundred buses and 600 trams were confined to depot. Thousands of Glaswegians had to walk to work, prompting the Evening Times splash headline, "Shanks' Pony Saturday".
SOME EVENTS IN 1953
Jan 19: 71.1% of US TV sets are tuned into I Love Lucy, to watch Lucy give birth to Little Ricky. The figure exceeds even that for Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidential inauguration the following day.
Jan 31–Feb 1: Many hundreds of people die in the North Sea flood in the southwestern Netherlands, Belgium and the UK.
Feb 28: James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA, the now-famous double helix.
Mar 5: Death of Joseph Stalin. He is succeeded by Georgy Malenkov.
May 29: Sir Edmund Hillary from New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay from Nepal become the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest
June 2: The Queen is crowned at Westminster Abbey.
July 27: The Korean War comes to an end after three years.
Aug: A CIA-backed coup topples Iran's prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh.
Nov 25: England's national football team loses 6-3 to Hungary in a sensational match at Wembley Stadium.
Source: Wikipedia
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