Our Christmas 1941 - Spent at Daisy's and Dolly's

1941
Silent
4m

It's the season to eat, drink and be merry in the Tigg household, with feasting and jollity captured in this vivid amateur film.

Who said we were rationed?, asks an opening intertitle in this wartime Christmas home movie showing deprivation overcome, for one splendid day at least. After a meal around a crowded table, a flourish of gifts are dispensed from a decorated model ship (in place of a Christmas tree) - along with a kiss for each recipient. Then it's off to Ern and Evelyn's for tea and a spot of table-tennis.

The film's main location may well be Harrow, as the final intertitle suggests. The home movies made by the extended Tigg -Osborne family span several generations of family life, many of which are held in the BFI National Archive.

Ration Book Britain

As if the bombs weren't enough, wartime Britons faced another fearsome foe: the ration book...

Everyday goods, from food and fuel to clothing, became luxuries - especially with supplies from Britain's Empire territories routinely intercepted by Nazi U-boats. Public information messages urged housewives to get creative with dried eggs and potato peel. Austerity was soul-sapping, and lasted long after the peace was won.

But rationing did help foster a sense of 'all in it together' and focused minds on managing scarce resources (while also creating profitable opportunities for the entrepreneurial 'spiv'). Make-do-and-mend became second nature, and wartime Brits recycled and salvaged more diligently then even today's eco-conscious citizens.