Paul McCartney Shared Joyful Memories of the ‘Innocence’ of His Childhood Christmases
Though Paul McCartney can afford to celebrate Christmas lavishly these days, he looks back fondly on his childhood celebrations of the holiday. McCartney shared how he celebrated Christmas as a child. He also spoke about why these are among his favorite memories.
Paul McCartney shared how he spent Christmases as a child
McCartney grew up in a Liverpool home with his mother, father, and younger brother. He said that his favorite Christmas memories come from this era of his life.
“I think waking up as a really little kid on Christmas morning, and just seeing the white pillowcase that we used to get,” he said in an interview on his official website, adding, “It was like a stocking but Mum and Dad used to put it in a white pillowcase, and it would be a present, a couple of nuts and a tangerine.”
He explained that the idea of Santa Claus having visited their house was always thrilling.
“We weren’t well off so it wouldn’t be like kids today with their serious couple-of-hundred-quid presents,” he said. “But yeah, it was just so exciting it was the ‘He’s been! He’s been!’ Just totally buying into this idea that Santa had been in your bedroom and left this white pillowcase. Nuts, tangerine and a present or two. It’s funny though; it’s not so much the value of the presents — though that was good too! — it was just this idea of, ‘He’s been!'”
He believed that the innocence of this memory is what makes it so valuable to him.
“The favorite memories come through your childhood innocence,” he said.
He also has fond memories of New Year’s Eve
For McCartney, the whole holiday season holds warm memories. He particularly enjoyed his family’s New Year’s Eve party each year.
“Dad had told me: ‘Learn the piano, because you’ll get invited to parties,'” McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “He’d always play on New Year’s Eve. Our family always had big New Year’s Eve parties. They were some of the best parties I ever remember, because everyone got together.”
The children served as the bartenders, which McCartney said was always fun.
“It was wonderful, because everybody would get pissed out of their arses,” he said. “Old Uncle Jack, a wheezy old man, would say, ‘All right, son. Have you heard this one?’ and tell the best jokes ever. A really good joke is a great acquisition for me, it’s like gold bullion. I don’t remember Uncle Jack ever coming up with a bad one, they were always killers. There’d be him and my Uncle Harry, drunk out of their minds. And at midnight on New Year’s Eve at Uncle Joe’s house in Aintree, a piper would come in — just a neighbor — and it was lovely; very, very warm.”
Paul McCartney always wanted to be home for Christmas as an adult
After childhood, McCartney’s music career became demanding. Despite this, he said he never spent a Christmas away from home.
“No! I have always tried to be off,” he said on his website. “We always kind of specified that we wanted to be home. The nearest we ever came to that was with The Beatles. We used to have a Christmas show. We used to get dressed up! And actually it was really cool because it was a sort of like a panto, but with musical people. A musically packaged show but with all sorts of little Christmassy things … So anyway, I don’t even think that was Christmas day! It would have been the week of Christmas. So that was fun. But no, Christmas has always been kind of sacrosanct.”
