Sunday, December 26th, 1943

Darling Joan,

We all arrived home from spending the Xmas holiday with Auntie Rosa and Uncle George about an hour ago, and as it is only just 10 o’clock there will be time to write to you before I go off to bed. Needless to say the twins are already there and fast asleep, the journey having tired them out. Also, of course, they have been going to bed a good deal later than is usual.

We went over on Christmas morning and got there just in time for dinner. We were amongst the fortunate ones in that we had roast turkey, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Baby Brian, who is four and a half months old, was a little angel all over the holiday, and Mummy spent most of her time nursing him.

Uncle George had spent a great deal of time in decorating the house for the holiday, and we all enjoyed ourselves. The twins insisted on lots of games and we did our best to fix them up. Margaret lives quite near and her Daddy brought her round twice to see us, and we paid them a visit this morning. Baby Christine is a dear, I know you would have enjoyed all the baby talk there was there, as did Anne. She adores babies.

Uncle had a Xmas tree, and had managed to get quite a few presents for it. During the afternoon of Christmas Day, he told the twins he had to go out to see somebody, but really he went into another room and he dressed up as Santa Claus. He played the part so well that the children really thought that Santa had come specially to see them, and were they thrilled? At first they were a little frightened, Margaret in particular, but that soon wore off after he had given them a present off the tree. When he went they gave him three cheers, and have been talking about it ever since.

We didn’t get any snow this year, and the weather was such that very few people went abroad at all. We did go out for two little walks, but it was damp and inclined to be foggy, so we stayed mostly indoors, as did everyone else. It isn’t very often that the weather at Christmas is very different to what it was this year, but some years I can remember having heavy snow, and some Christmases having very fine sunny weather so that you wanted to spend most of it out of doors. I think that the weather that is wanted depends very much on whether it is a family reunion you are having or not. If you are, then I think that the weather doesn’t matter at all because you are going to spend it indoors anyway.

On Saturday next, Mr. and Mrs. Kemp have invited us all to go to tea with them and to have a jolly evening afterwards playing games with the children. They miss their two children who are in America, Janet and John, so much at this time of the year, as we miss you darling. Still, I hope you had a lovely time, and that goes for Teddy and Sandy, and for Uncle and Aunt as well. Write and tell me all about it, won’t you dear.

Lots of love from your
Daddy
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