Holly, homemade wine and Father Christmas' sledge marks - former Advertiser reporter remembers Chrismases past

The mouse-grey Ferguson tractor slowly and steadily made its way down School Street as if mindful of the importance of its burden.

There was a smell of diesel smoke in the air as the plucky little machine’s wheels carefully explored the expanses of the previous night’s snowfall.

Meanwhile, dutifully following behind, the trailer seemed equally as cautious as it followed the tyre tracks, gradually compacting with dull thuds and crunches the erstwhile virgin snow covering the road.

Onwards they went, down the hill and then past the ‘Cobby’ tree on the Green, the tractor and trailer majestically progressed with its precious cargo, until finally coming to a halt at its destination in the farmyard just below the church.

The journey was at last over. And there it now lay. Holly… and lots of it, piled high in the corner of one of the barns, the red berries becoming shiny and glistening as the thin December sunshine melted the frosts of night away.

Later that day, the villagers would start arriving with bags to transport their share of the seasonal evergreen, the bright green prickly boughs soon to decorate many a home…

This is just one of my Churchover 1950s Christmas recollections, faded in some respects perhaps, yet in essence as clear to me as if it had happened the day before yesterday.

The Rugby area experienced a couple of white Christmases during that decade. Once again, I must add the proviso ‘if my memory serves me correctly’ but the progress of the tractor and its load of holly is one that rings as clear as any Yuletide bell.

It was bound for Herbert Mackaness’s farm, and knowing what the canny late gentleman farmer was like, he undoubtedly turned the profusion of holly trees in his hedges to his seasonal financial advantage.

One 1950s festive season, the snow started falling on Christmas Eve. Early on the Big Day itself, my friend Michael Lucas came to call, and excitedly pointed out sledge tracks that led down the hill, turned left at the Cobby, and carried on down Cosford Lane.

This then was the absolute proof that Father Christmas had called he reckoned… which of course was indeed true, as the bulging pillow case at the bottom of my bed confirmed.

One Christmas Eve, there was much excitement in the village as the Rugby Fire Brigade rushed to tackle a barn blaze at Harborough Fields farm.

This was the home of newly-weds Joe and Deirdre Towers, and it seems that Joe had been thawing out some frozen water pipes with a blowtorch

when some straw or hay had accidentally ignited.

The fire was easily visible from Churchover and many villagers gathered on the Green to watch the unfolding drama, the adults no doubt later retiring to The Greyhound Inn once their curiosity had been satisfied.

Across the road from our home at Woodbine Cottage were ‘Uncle’ George Hirons, his housekeeper Ethel Golder, and their respective daughters, Margaret, Mavis and Sheila.

Ethel – or Auntie Go-Go as she was known – had been bombed out during the Coventry Blitz in which her husband Alfred had been killed.

The family lived in one of the Five Houses, and as a child I would take ‘Uncle’ George and Ethel’s present over to them, a reward for their feeding the hens while we were away on holiday in the summer.

The gift was always the same – a festive box of 50 Woodbine cigarettes, the pair’s favourite smoke. In fact, you rarely saw either of them without one on their mouths, their living room always being filled with clouds of the bright blue smoke that I still associate with ‘Woodies’.

At some stage over the festive period, George and Ethel would be invited over to our house. I always looked forward to this, because I hero-worshipped Uncle George, a man who seemed to know everything there was to know about the surrounding countryside.

Besides, I was allowed a tumbler of mother’s home-made wine – ‘as it was Christmas’ – which made that time of year extra special.

Back then, in common with a lot of villages in the Rugby area, Churchover held a midnight church service on Christmas Eve.

I wrote about this at length in my book Beef Cubes and Burdock: Memories of a 1950s Country Childhood, also referring to the many customs that were once held at this time of year, such as the mummers plays and the singing of the Coventry Carol, particularly appropriate bearing in mind the proximity of Godiva’s town to the Rugby area.

All this seems such a long time ago now. But the older I become, and with grandchildren of roughly the same age as I was during the 1950s, my thoughts this festive season will once again turn to those happy Churchover Christmases when all the world appeared at ease with itself.

Whether it was a trailer full of holly, ‘Uncle’ George’s Woodbines, or Father Christmas’s sleigh tracks in the snow, this was indeed the time of year when there was magic abroad and anything seemed possible.

John Phillpott’s third book Go and Make the Tea, Boy! is available from booksellers and online.