Nostalgia: When Christmas meant a trip to the greengrocer

The earliest shots were taken not long after Dickens’ time, when girls and boys could expect toy musical instruments, hobby horses and board games in their stockings. The presents may have been simple by today’s standards, but in an age when expectations were lower, the value was priceless.

The pictures also betray the British determination to enjoy the festive season even in the most extreme circumstances – a characteristic that was evident again last year, even if the danger was not comparable.

In one poignant snap from December 1940, the very darkest period of the war, boys at a Dr Barnardo’s home are seen playing in an air raid shelter they built themselves in time for Christmas. In another, a young woman serving with the Army Auxiliary Territorial Forces decorates her quarters in the billet where she will spend the first Christmas of the war. The caption writer uses the phrase “somewhere in the Eastern Command”, which was how troops described their location on their postcards home, in order not to unwittingly pass on classified information.

We also glimpse an earlier lifestyle still – and one Dickens himself would have recognised – as two little boys drag home the Christmas tree they have just chosen at the fruit and vegetable market in London’s Covent Garden. The First World War had been over for barely two years when it was taken. In another shot from the same period, a young boy waits in a queue of children to buy mistletoe from the local greengrocer.

Even though the innocence of those times is lost to the wind, the magic is not – and the power of the festive season to captivate us still is cause enough for celebration.

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