Until the late 1950s Christmas in Stratford was a very modest affair centring around church services, carol singing and charity fundraising.

There would also be family get togethers, with good food, and a bit of fun. The focus of the day would be the Christmas dinner. During war time, it was quite a challenge to make a tasty dinner using rations.

The dinner would be followed by carols, games and listening to favourite shows on the radio. Christmas was a homely affair, without a lot of tinsel and public events.

Present-giving didn’t feature much. Santa would bring most Stratford children a satsuma, some nuts and maybe if they were lucky, just one book or toy. Toys would even be handmade – Derrick Smart remembers the beautiful pecking bird toys made by the German prisoners of war in Stratford. Presents for adults tended to be rather practical.

A memory:  

“I came to Stratford in 1924 and it was definitely more religious back then. All we received for Christmas was a stocking with an apple, orange a few sweets and one year a book called Tiger Tim that cost 2.6 pence. We bought Cadbury’s cocoa and they had coupons in and we saved these coupons all year and at Christmas we bought some Cadbury’s chocolate and Bournville. This was the only time we had chocolate as it was too expensive to buy. For our dinner at Christmas we had a capon cockerel and again it was the only time we had chicken as it was too expensive.”

“On Christmas Eve night we took long candles to bed and the next day the wax was liquid and my dad thew his on the fire, so I did the same and it blew the chimney up. There was smoke everywhere and soot all over the Christmas cake. The police came and they charged us 10 shillings which in that time was really expensive. I worked at Scholfields in Wood street and rabbits, pheasant and other animals dressed the Windows.”

We worked at Timothy Whites which was a chemist and hardware store. We ordered toys from toy fairs and our windows were dressed with gardening and electrical goods and household supplies. We had 2x Loren loads of goods each week and for Christmas we had a special offer of a three piece bedroom set for £18. I delivered all the items for Christmas on the top of my car. The next day everything came down and new stock was put up for the Boxing Day sales.”

Post-war Boom

After the long hard war years and finally, the end of rationing in 1954, Christmas shopping took on a new significance. The standard of living was on the rise and consumers had more money in their pocket for treats and extras.

When commercial television appeared in 1955, advertisers started to target children, and branded toys tied to films and television programmes began to appear.

High Street in Stratford would have been a magnet for children in the 1950s and 60s.

Sleaths at 16 High Street shifted their retail offer from bicycles in 1930s and perambulators 1940s to childrens’ toys by the 1950s. By the 1960s they were claiming to be one of the biggest stores entirely devoted to toys in the West Midlands.

Midland Educational at 10 High Street spanned stationery and art materials through to board games and even Lego.

WH Smiths responded to the developing teenage market, renaming their ‘gramophone’ department with the trendier moniker of ‘record’ department.

J C Smiths (later to become Debehnams) was probably the first shop in town to host Santa in a grotto, developing a ritual that would become part of the children’s anticipation of the coming Christmas.

Decorations

In the 1930s and 40s, few shops bothered to decorate their windows for Christmas. Only butchers and grocers really went to town. Hensons was famous for its annual Christmas display, as remembered by Mick Brain:

“We used to prepare the carcasses and they would hang down both sides of the shop. And at the back of the shop would be the bodies of beef, quarters of beef  which we used to ‘fat’. We used to use fat on the outside of the carcases, and put patterns of fat, especially at Christmas time….So it was quite a nice picture of a butchers shop in those days.”

Pargetters Bakery at 3 High Street also made a big effort at Christmas, even creating a Christmas grotto downstairs in their café.

At Pargetters there were brick seating round the outsides and day to day things in the shop. Everything was dressed and made on the day and sold on the day, except cakes that lasted until the next day because they didn’t go hard like bread would. Downstairs in the cellar was everything for Christmas; tins of biscuits, Christmas cakes, wedding cakes and so much more. Mainly women would come to order their cakes for Christmas and you could have any cake in any size, so you could have anything you wanted.

The later years

It was not until the 1980s, that the whole town centre was decorated for Christmas.

Against a gloomy background of economic recession and IRA bombing campaigns, it was realised that Stratford needed to make more of an effort to lure shoppers into town.

The Hotel and Caterers organised the first Christmas lights in Henley Street in 1983 but by 1986, the Town Council and Town Trust had got involved, with all the main streets lit up.

The ‘Switch On’ event started in 1992 and the first celebrities to turn the lights on were Ragdoll Productions’ television characters, Rosie and Jim, who arrived at Waterside  on a canal boat.

Until 2015, the process of switching on the lights was not quite the high tech operation you might expect; when the celebrity flicked the switch, a man at the top of a ladder in each of Stratford’s main streets, would then turn a switch on a junction box by hand. The new system turns all the lights on simultaneously.

Bob Brolley caught everybody out one year, when he did a practice run, leading to the lights going on too early, before the proper countdown. There are no practice runs now!

Nowadays, it feels normal for the start of the Christmas shopping period to be celebrated in November, with a big event involving everything from Santa arriving in a helicopter  to laser displays. Christmas shopping in Stratford is now a ritual for the whole family to enjoy or endure!

One shop in Stratford brings a love of Christmas for tourists and locals, all year round. The Nutcracker Christmas Shop on Henley Street, opposite Shakespeare’s Birthplace has been open since 2002  and has become an important tourist destination in its own right. Owners, Shirley and Robert Newman had tested the market, with three other shops in Scotland and despite local scepticism, have developed a loyal customer base. Robert is a real people person and the reputation of the shop has grown through word-of-mouth, across the globe.

Thanks to Richard Thomas, Kathryn Hill and Jessica Lowe for their research.