Knitting Factory Cartoons
Posted in Sewing on 05/29/2004 11:18 pm by admin
Christmas Past
Christmas in the 1940s was a very austere utilitarian affair. During and after the Second World War there were very few luxuries. In the Infant School which I attended we were given a piece of cake and a cordial drink. Our infant school, in an old church, was surrounded by barbed wire as it was near to a Prisoner of War camp which we had to pass every day. Toys were mainly made of wood. Christmas presents of dolls' houses, toy yachts, wooden scooters, sledges were all home made. The sledges were marvellous playthings as the winters of the 1940s were very cold and there was so much snow. Many were the Christmas card scenes in those days with deep snow and also the intense cold. Queues would form outside gas works for bags of coke as coal was in short supply.
In Bootle children who had lost their fathers in the war were given special presents, mainly apples, which neighbours grouped together to provide. During the war we were taken to Broadway in Worcestershire which was like another world. It was well away from the bombing and as much fruit as was possible, cherry pie, strawberry pie, apple pie ----- another world.
There were very few Christmas cards around in those days but no one thought about them as we played games on bombed sites.
Many little boys wore balaclava helmets knitted by their mothers or grandmothers, and these kept the ears warm on those very cold days.
During this time many women worked in armament factories and government offices, and most people had jobs after the war although the country was broke.
Some buses and motor cars towed trailers with huge gas tanks as fuel was rationed - not quite the image one would see on a Christmas card. Almost everything was rationed. Going shopping one would always have to take a ration book and clothes coupons would be sold on the black market. The enduring cartoon images in newspapers if they weren't of Hitler or Churchill, would be of the 'spiv'. The spiv could get anything and the black market proliferated.
Everything seemed to be in black, white and various shades of grey. Our drawings in school, even of Christmas scenes, would be pencil and paper.
After the war, in craft lessons, we would be taught to make cards from cardboard, and eventually we made Christmas cards, almost always with religious scenes. The best drawings would be pinned on the wall of the classroom, and others would be given as Christmas cards to parents and grandparents.
 |
No items matching your keywords were found.