We sat down with Norry Wilson who runs the Lost Glasgow Facebook page to chat about Christmas in Glasgow.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Christmas itself has changed dramatically in Glasgow.
00:03 And what an awful lot of folk fail to realise,
00:09 historically, Christmas in Scotland wasn't that important.
00:13 The big thing was New Year.
00:15 The big thing was Hogmanay in the New Year.
00:18 Christmas Day wasn't even a holiday in Scotland until 1958.
00:23 Really?
00:24 So if Christmas Day fell on a Saturday or a Sunday,
00:27 you were fine.
00:28 If it fell during the working week,
00:30 most folk in Scotland would be working until lunchtime.
00:33 And they'd only get the afternoon off.
00:36 And it wasn't until, I think it was 1974,
00:39 before Boxing Day and New Year's Day
00:43 became public holidays in Scotland.
00:45 So Christmas was very much--
00:49 it was focused on the children, because the adults were all
00:52 looking forward to New Year.
00:54 That was Scotland's big celebration.
00:57 Christmas was looked on almost as a sort of English incomer.
01:03 But obviously, with the nature of national advertising
01:06 and national broadcasting, slowly but surely,
01:09 Christmas has become this bigger and bigger thing,
01:12 particularly in the minds of children,
01:14 obviously, because it means presents and all the rest of it.
01:17 But Christmas was a relatively minor sort of thing
01:23 in the social life of Scotland, really until the 1960s,
01:29 when folk started getting time off for it.
01:31 And it's also-- I don't know.
01:36 I mean, the one thing I specifically remember,
01:40 we were a bit flush.
01:41 My mum could drive.
01:42 We had a car.
01:43 And the other great treat was getting taken uptown
01:45 to see the lights.
01:48 And it wasn't just the classic upsucky,
01:50 doon-bucky, and a langard guile.
01:52 Because of course, the whole of Suckey Hall Street,
01:54 the whole of Buchanan Street, the whole of Argyle Street
01:57 was this beautiful, brightly lit tunnel of fairy lights.
02:05 And it wasn't just those three.
02:06 The whole of Renfield Street, right from the top,
02:08 right down to Central Station, it was all lit as well.
02:13 And folks say, now, why doesn't Glasgow do that now?
02:18 At the time, it wasn't really-- the council only
02:22 had to do with George Square.
02:25 They'd do the George Square lights.
02:27 And then they'd chip in, because all the big department stores--
02:31 and at that point, Glasgow was a department store city.
02:34 So up in Suckey Hall Street, you had Daley's.
02:38 You had Treyrong's.
02:40 I'm trying to remember.
02:41 There was another huge department store up there.
02:44 But all the big department stores
02:45 would put money into a Christmas fund.
02:49 So they could-- and the council would put some money in as well,
02:52 so they could light their street.
02:55 Because obviously, if you've got spectacular streetlights,
02:58 you're bringing bodies into town.
03:00 And if they're coming into town to see the lights,
03:02 then hopefully they might come into your shop
03:04 and spend a few quid.
03:06 Daley's, that was the other big one in Suckey Hall Street.
03:11 And if you didn't have a car, you'd come in
03:12 and you'd walk around.
03:14 Or right through the late '60s and into the '70s,
03:18 Glasgow Corporation used to run a Christmas lights bus,
03:22 a double-decker bus.
03:24 And for literally tuppence or fivepence,
03:28 you could get the Christmas lights bus.
03:30 It would go right around the whole city,
03:31 all the streets that were lit with Christmas lights.
03:34 And you can imagine the fight there was for seats upstairs,
03:38 because every kid wanted to be upstairs, particularly
03:40 at the front of the bus.
03:42 Because it was like traveling through this tunnel
03:45 of magical lights.
03:47 How much would a tuppence be then?
03:50 Yeah, probably about 5, 10 pence today.
03:54 We're talking old money, so that's pre-1971 decimalization.
04:01 But it was really cheap, because basically, they
04:03 wanted to get as many bodies on board as possible.
04:07 The corporation were running the buses anyway,
04:09 so you may as well stick Christmas lights special
04:12 on the front.
04:13 The driver would put on a Santa hat and a beard.
04:16 And I'm quite sure probably a few inspectors
04:19 got dressed up as elves.
04:22 I was never on it, but I've seen photographs of it.
04:24 And the kids are obviously having an absolute whale
04:26 of a time, because quite often, they're
04:28 on it without their parents, which would just
04:30 be absolute carnage.
04:31 It would be absolute human zoo.
04:33 You'd get, what, 50, 60 Glasgow Wayans on a bus.
04:37 Just feel it, oh God. (laughs)
04:40 - Come on, you know. - I don't know.