Coming from a very small family – me and my mum, basically – Christmas wasn’t particularly memorable. It can’t have been because I barely remember any of it, but here’s a little of what I do remember.
Mum, born Neeltje Verburg on 18th August 1923 in Rotterdam, and I lived at 19 Warrington Road in Briz, known to people who aren’t from Briz as Brislington. Sadly, my mum and dad, Anthony Johansen, didn’t get on too well and separated at some time in the early 1960s, so it was just us in our sizeable three-bedroomed terraced house. Born in Rotterdam, her self-taught English was exceptional but she was always a stranger in a strange land. And being Dutch, our Christmas started off very differently to the traditional British one.
From sometime in December, the little Richard would put a shoe in front of the coal fire every evening and say a little poem which went like this:
Sinterklaas Kapoentje,
Leg wat in mijn schoentje,
Leg wat in mijn laarsje,
Dank je Sinterklaasje!
Which translates as:
Saint Nicholas, Little Rascal,
Put something into my little shoe,
Put something into my little boot,
Thank you, little Saint Nicholas!
And the following morning, I came downstairs to find that he had visited, usually leaving a small piece of chocolate. I must have been very young or maybe I was older and very naive, but I had no doubt that Sinterklass had really been. Being Dutch/English, this was in addition to the Christmas gifts which our version of Sinterklass, Santa Claus, would bring on Christmas morning. What a lucky boy I was.
Christmas itself was always the same. Mum and me in our living room opening presents – I don’t remember buying her any presents or if she had any to open. My bad – followed by mum and me having a Christmas dinner of undefined meat, roasters and peas and watching the telly for the rest of the day. And do you know what? That was all fine by me. I had my new socks and underpants, maybe the new Monkees annual and if I was really lucky, an LP and a book. The Jennings books were my favourites.
It was an early lesson of the old saying that what you don’t have, you don’t miss. For years, I stood by that old saying until one day I worked out it was actually bollocks. Because later, you realise that things you want and more importantly need, like help with schoolwork, help with job-searching and seeking out mental health treatment life might not be quite not be so easily available and accessible. But the key thing is that my mum achieved the small miracle of making something out of almost nothing for Christmas, as she usually managed to do throughout my childhood and indeed later life.
So, that was what Christmas meant to Little Richard. The transition to Big Rick (Big Dick might not necessary be an appropriate term, nor indeed an accurate one, to use in a family blog) proceeded in a start and stop fashion until our own children came along. While money was tight, we could still afford the things I never had and I was happy about that. You always want your children to do better than you did – not hard in my case – and you want them to have better Christmas memories. I reckon we managed that, too. What, then, did Christmas mean to me?
I never felt the presence of God, even at a very young age, and the religious stuff seemed like a bit of a fairytale, unlike the existence of Father Christmas who I met several times in the big department stores in Bristol. The latter was definitely real, although even then it always occurred to me just how naff the presents were that he gave to the kids who saw him. He was so real that he managed, on an annual basis, to get down our chimney pot to deliver some presents. I didn’t think too hard about how this big fat bearded bloke managed to squeeze down in to the house, especially since the coal fire was still quietly burning embers into the early hours. He was quiet, that’s for sure.
Sinterklaas Kapoentje ended in our family tradition with me, not least because for many years I had forgotten the words. This was not helped by the fact that I learned as a child to speak fluent Dutch, but never to read or write it. How mad is that?
Now, much later in life, I’m getting back to much smaller Christmases and this year it’s just my partner, my youngest son and me in the house. I’m happy with that because that’s the natural order of things, that one day your kids grow up and they acquire their own homes where they too celebrate Christmas. And now, like then, the fewer people around the table, the better.
The Verburg name is a spent lineage, with me the only offspring from my mother’s side of the family. The bloodline, slowly more diluted, carries on but Sinterklass, at least in this small part of England, is no more. But Dank je Sinterklaasje! It was lovely talking to you.
PS Yes, that is Zwarte Piet or Black Pete in the background. I never knew anything about him at the time, thank goodness.
