THIS was Christmas in the Dewhirst household in 1937.

The artificial tree, which spent 11 months of the year in a high cupboard with its branches folded back against its trunk, represented our main decoration but no words can describe the excitement of bringing it out and putting its baubles on.

Once I had started school I was taught how to make simple paper chains, with which I bedecked our living room.

The teddy bear, nearly as big as myself aged one, was my main present that year.

During the following wartime Christmases, it was to be a Rupert Bear annual. I can still in imagination wander over the fields and forests of his idyllic Nutwood.

Before commercialisation set seriously in, Christmas was a magical time.

We children knew the words and tunes of a range of traditional carols, though we didn’t always understand them (for example, “Lo, He abhors not the Virgin’s womb”!).