BACK in the 1960s Southampton was bright with cheerful Christmas decorations, traffic made its way up and down Above Bar where shop windows featured festive displays and the streets were festooned with strings of coloured lights.

Shops such as Bourne & Hollingsworth, Edwin Jones, the Cadena Cafe, Timothy Whites, Tyrrell & Green, together with Plummers, were full with bustling crowds of shoppers while others gathered for carols around the Christmas tree that used to furnish the Civic Centre forecourt.

Most of the stores had a grotto where youngsters could meet Santa and the whole period leading up to Christmas was far less pressurised than today.

However, 20 years previously Southampton was experiencing a very different Christmas, one with blackouts, food rationing and families living in makeshift accommodation following the widespread destruction of many communities.

Exactly Seventy five years ago this year, on Christmas Eve, 1940, the Daily Echo captured the mood, noting: “War is the very opposite of the spirit of Christmas and all that it means; yet amidst the strife and the struggle, the Christmas spirit lives in the hearts of the British people.

“The prelude to the second Christmas of the Second World War has certainly been strange, rather unreal and difficult.

“Rationing... the shopping rush to beat the blackout... the ever increasing need for care in balancing domestic budgets... dispersal of families... uncertainties...

“If it is less of an occasion for feasting and self-indulgence and more a welcomed opportunity to be self-less, we may count it amongst the happiest days of our lives.

“Let us then be cheery as we know how; let us determine to make others cheery; let us make it a real Christmas Day.’’

Money sent to the Mayor of Southampton from well-wishers all over the world was used to buy presents for the children and elderly, as well as those made homeless following enemy air raids.

Among the money received by the Civic Centre was a cheque from a South African mining magnate for £2,000, an enormous sum in those days, which is equivalent to almost £80,000 today.

Blackout regulations meant there were no choirs singing carols in Southampton streets and for the first time in living memory there were no pantomimes.

The Daily Echo observed: “Shops lacked their accustomed blaze of glory. In Southampton, few had shop windows left, after the raids, to dress. Instead of the packed, fascinating tiers of gaily-coloured goods gleaming from bright windows, there have been blank boardings with a cold matter-of-fact notice, ‘Business as Usual’, or, even more, laconically, ‘Open’.

“Christmas, 1940, will have many strange memories for the people of Southampton, but memories which will be woven into the history of Britain.’’