Christmas Day 1984 was special for a lot of reasons. It was my brother Jim’s first and it was the first that I can clearly remember. It was also a Christmas spent at Geggy and Grary’s house in Hunter’s Way which always added extra excitement to the occasion. That Christmas Eve saw the birth of a beautiful family tradition that survives to this day. I am referring to the Christmas Eve stocking picture! I don’t why it happened in 1984. Perhaps it was the lovely new handmade stocking I’d received from Granny Rene. Maybe it was the particularly lovely yuletide setting provided by the living room complete with brightly lit tree in the conservatory. Whatever it was I ended up posing with my stocking like I was holding aloft next years Budget while the paparazzi that was Mum and Grary snapped away with what now seem hopelessly quaint instant cameras. The resulting picture was copied at almost every subsequent Christmas of our childhoods. Now my son has taken up the mantle, complete with beautiful stocking that was a gift from his Granny AKA Grammie!
Me in 1984 and 3-year-old Luke in 2013
1984 is also emblazoned across my memory for another reason: the presents. There are some Christmas pictures I look back on and hardly recognise the toys and games my brother and I received; so short were our childish attention spans and so potentially flimsy were some toys. Yet when I look back at 1984 I realise that even 30 years later I clearly 
recognise almost every gift in every picture. Pretty much everything was still in use and being enjoyed as much as 10 years later (a feat for which my Mum’s careful shopping in the run up to December deserves almost universal credit.) Of the toys I personally received from ‘Father Christmas’, none was more memorable or indeed massive as the Scalextric Le Mans 24-Hours set. Looking back, the box was almost as big as I was! It is certainly questionable whether a giant electric race track was entirely suitable for a pint-size 4-year-old. Indeed, the pictures suggest that Geg and my Dad got at least as much fun out of the thing as I did on Christmas Day.
A big kid fights it out on track with a little kid!
What Father Christmas might have lacked in terms of judging exactly how ready a pre-schooler was for such a monumental gift was certainly more than made up for by the sets 
longevity. I can clearly remember Jim and I racing the gold and silver Porsche 911s as late as 1993. I can even remember writing to the company who made Scalextric asking for advice on how to maintain the track. In fact, the very first gift my Step-Father John gave me was a white and yellow F1 Car for the very same track, all of 5 years after I’d struggled to open the box on Christmas Day 1984.
Little Jamie is exhausted by all those presents!
It wouldn’t be until 1988 that my brother would have the chance to enjoy a Christmas at Hunter’s Way that he could actually remember. Only then would he come to appreciate what I had learnt in 1984: a Christmas spent at Geggy and Grary’s house was always very special.
You can’t beat matching Christmas jumpers.
Sam's Family History Blog 