Christmas Then and Now.

What does Christmas mean to you now? I suppose it depends on your age. Now it is almost nationwide a holiday in UK but it wasn't always so, at least, not in the Scottish farming community.
My father always had the visiting threshing mill at the farm for Christmas day, which meant extra workers drafted in to help and they also had to be fed by my mother. First of all, we would be up at the crack of dawn, as most children still are, to see what was in our stockings we'd left hanging on the mantelpiece in the kitchen. (In these days of radiators or underfloor heating, where do the stockings go?) Things had to be tidied up quickly as the millmen (who actually travelled around with the machine, as opposed to the local temporary help) came in for a full breakfast at 7am. 10 am was "piece time" when a huge wicker basket of rolls, some spread with a cheesy mixture and some with potted meat and a big urn of tea (no Nescafe then, or indeed, teabags!) were taken down to the yard. Lunch time (or dinner time as we called it) saw about 15 people seated on benches and trestle tables in our big kitchen for soup and probably stew. Tea-time at 5 o'clock saw only the millmen back in to be fed. There was no afternoon teabreak then.
We would have a special dinner, probably during the following weekend, consisting of a goose which father had shot and mother had to pluck, clean and then cook, followed by a big steamed christmas pudding or, my favourite, a clootie dumpling. Turkeys were still a few years away yet, and trifles were not considered filling enough then for "pudding".........no thoughts of dieting in those days.
I must have caused chaos one particular year as I was born smack, bang in the middle of Christmas Day! Mother still had all her culinary chores to fulfil but I suspect she had a bit of help that day.
Now, even in Scotland on the farms, this day is a holiday, unless you are involved in the feeding of livestock, or dairying.