大象传媒

By David Reid, Local Heritage Librarian, Stockport Library.

I can't say I'm a Christmas person but on the other hand I am no Scrooge uttering Bah! Humbug!
Essentially Christmas, as we practise it today, is an "invented" 19th century tradition grafted onto a religious one and as society has got more prosperous, increasingly lavish.
There were exceptions to this generalisation. Wartime was an occasion when Christmas was limited in the extreme, and especially the years after the Second World War. These were very bleak years of harsh and unrelenting austerity.
What reminded me of the Age of Austerity was coming across an edition of the Stockport Express for Decemebr 20th, 1945. The paper was a miserable and drab skeletal tabloid reflection of its pre war broad-sheet opulence. There was still a lot to read but it helped to have a magnifying glass.
The front page was devoted to adverts of various kinds. If you wanted local new you looked inside.
The newspaper acted as an encyclopaedic guide to just about everything for local citizens.
The regular themes were elaborated in this issue with seasonal touches.
Selections from the Messiah, for example, were to be sung at the Edgeley Road Methodist Church. The Stockport Council of Churches had organised Community Singing of Christmas Hymns and Carols in the Centenary Hall of Stcokport Sunday School, led by the Stockport Choral Society. The Co-op Youth had a Boxing Night Party in the Unity Hall.
Throughout the paper larger firms advertised their wares and these included Hollingdrake's, Clifford Turner's, Ormesher's Removals, Quayle's and the Stockport Bedding Company.
Interspersed with local adverts were those of national companies - Rinso washing powder, Paxo "the Best Stuffing", Commer Vans, Cable and Wireless, Ford Cars and Callard and Bowsers "celebrated Butter Scotch".
However if you wanted to buy these products it was not always possible because of the need for ration coupons and licences of various kinds, and this is reflected in references to "best coupon value".
At a time when consumer goods were scarce the recycling of unwanted items by sale was widespread. These included an electric iron (30s) a boys suit (30s), a doll's house (拢3), child's cycle (拢6/10s), a hoover (拢19/19s). The value of a pound then was roughly equivalent to 拢40 today.
I will leave you to do the calculations but you can see how high the prices were.
What is really striking is the cost of a hen about to lay - about 拢6 or 拢200 in todays money! Of course eggs were rationed - one a week and chicken was an almost unavailable luxury food. Christmas Turkeys were beyond most people's pockets even if you could get one. On page 9 is a picture of a little girl with some turkeys with the caption - "Wot - no Turkeys?"
Limited coal was a real hardship but it was possible to buy peat and logs - this must have been the first time peat had been used as a fuel since the eighteenth century.
One theme that does run through the paper is entertainment and recreation. In a drab world there was a real craving for fun and pleasure. Rightly, after a war with all its privations and dangers, people wanted to relax and enjoy themselves. Perhaps the most popular form was the cinema. There were no less than 19 cinemas in the immediate vicinity of Stockport. With a possible audience of 30,000 this was big business.
What escapism was on during Christmas week? The major town centre cinemas were showing: Tarzans Desert Mystery (Palladium), The Three Caballeros (Plaza), Breaking the Ice (Prince's), Mr Skeffington (Ritz), Holiday Inn (Carlton), and the Great Mike (Super). All good stuff! On Christmas day most cinemas opened for an evening performance.
Other seasonal entertainment was the pantomime with Goldie Locks and the Three Bears followed by Aladdin at the Theatre Royal, Babes in the Wood at the Hippodrome with beautiful scenery, lovely girls, marvelous dancing and comedians. The stalls and circle were 6s, 3/6 and 2s.
There was almost a whole page of adverts for dances. For young people over 18 this brought glamour, light, music and the opportunity to meet the opposite sex in a public place where each partner could be, discreetly or not inspected and looked over.
The most expensive venue was the Levenshulme Palais - "Manchester's Ballroom De Lux" with the "New Palais Dance Orchestra" led by Bill Edge.
Tickets were priced from 2s to 7/6 but if you were in H.M. Forces uniform entry was free.
There was a page of sport and match results - Stockport County was decribed as being pursued by a jinx or voodoo (history repeats itself!).
There were pages covering births, marriages and deaths and a Roll of Honour of those who had died during the recent war. There was one wedding picture of the Phillips-Brundrett marriage.
In the news pages there was seasonal news, news about local areas, the letter box page and a truly fascinating piece about a local woman who was a nurse in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation.
The writer of "Idlers Log" expressed disappointment in the bleak contemporary scene of the post war world: "Last year at this time, we were all looking forward to a peace-time Christmas. We were longing to see street lights, the end of queues and more food ...(but)...our day dreams fail to materialise".
"Atticus's Jottings" reflected the same generalised sense of malaise: "There is so much for which to give thanks (the peace), and so little opportunity for celebration". He also talks of "food queues, black market greed, coupons, empty grates and enforced separation"

Christmas 1945 was celebrated in a past that was "another country" and so different as to be almost unrecognisable today. If anything emerges from the Stockport Express at this time it is the overwhelming and crushing presence of World War II that had just ended and its domination of the psyche of the times. Over fifty years later World War Two's mental hold has begun its final stages of dissipation with the passing of the generations that lived through it.

November,2003.

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