Jim Parker - first Christmas in a Hatfield new town house

Transcript:

Jim Parker on his first Christmas in Hatfield:

“We didn’t come here until 1960, but I remember from that time onwards the Co-Op butcher at Hilltop being open all Christmas Eve while the staff dressed the birds and they weren’t anything like the ready fowl that there are now and they were open all night doing this, plucking and cleaning the birds. Also Christmas certainly didn’t start in August as it appears to now. It was a fairly short and sharp affair. We came in the 1960s and our first Christmas was pretty sparse because our furniture hadn’t come, we had a card table and two fold up garden chairs, but we were determined that this was our house and we were going to have our Christmas. So we had a tree and everything that went with it. Cooked the meal etc., and then we went and did the rounds of the in-laws Boxing day and subsequent days, but we were determined to have Christmas Day in our own home.“