Let’s start with the once-a-year treat of turkey for Christmas dinner and turkey sandwiches for a week afterwards. Then there was watching the big film on Christmas Day, only ever seen at the cinema before. And once a year, the Radio Times double issue would be bought, and planning for Christmas viewing would begin.
Then there was something that every kid expected — at least one chocolate selection box that would never make it past Boxing Day.
In many homes, it didn’t even survive Christmas afternoon.
Selection boxes were bright, shiny, and exciting. For adults, they were an easy gift. For children, they were a chocolate-filled treasure.
And for most of us, they were gone within hours.
Although, I have to say, the selection boxes did seem to be a lot bigger back then. Maybe being a child had something to do with that — after all, everything looks bigger when you are a kid.
But shrinkflation hadn’t been thought of yet.
The boxes were big and were full of the chocolates everyone loved. A Mars bar, Aero, Kit-Kat, the Crunchie, the Flake, a packet of Buttons, a tube of Smarties and Rolos, to name a few. You would get ten or twelve to a box, and they were all full size — none of this miniature-size, two-bites-and-they-are-gone nonsense.
You can only imagine the sugar high.
I was always convinced that I could pace myself. Every year I’d unwrap the selection boxes and list them from favourites to potential swaps. Inside, the sweets were laid out like jewels: the Flake you could never eat neatly, the Caramel bar that stuck your teeth together, and I was always disappointed if I got a Bounty, because they were difficult to trade. Adults seemed to like them, but they had nothing to swap.
And then there were the negotiations — somehow, I had to offload that Bounty.