On This Day: Britons celebrate the first peacetime Christmas for six years after WWII

DECEMBER 25, 1945: Britons celebrated their first peacetime Christmas in six years on this day in 1945 – despite World War II killing 450,000 compatriots and leaving the country bankrupt.

Many families were able to be together for the first time since 1938, although 3.5million men remained in uniform and some were still overseas.

They also had to contend with bomb damage, rationing and the nightmare situation of 475,000 wounded soldiers and 300,000 prisoners of war returning.

Yet, with the threat of Nazi invasion over and the bloodshed having ended, it was also a time for immense joy.

Children, in particular, had a good reason to be cheerful.

A British Pathé newsreel filmed toys being made for the first time since the war began in 1939, albeit with restricted sales as austerity Britain was desperate to export goods.

The footage, which provides a fascinating glimpse of lives mixed with both hardships and joy, showed grinning youngsters playing with the newly made model trucks.

It was a scene unthinkable only a year earlier when manufacturing was solely geared to fighting.

The newsreel also showed illicit kerbside traders – with faces not shown - hawking their wares, including somewhat poignantly, toy guns.

Other black market items for sale included xylophones, yo-yos and balloons costing two shillings and sixpence.

Indeed, this illegal trade – now seemingly less immoral after Japan’s surrender in August and Germany’s in May – did record business in December 1945.

[On This Day: Germany invades Poland]

And meat, which was the last item to still be rationed when sales restrictions were finally lifted in July 1954, was the most sought-after luxury Christmas treat.

The newsreel shows a very happy sailor walking down a street with a turkey – the most prized of all festive flesh - slumped over his shoulders.

It also shows handfuls of cash being exchanged for another of these scarce birds in the front of a black marketeer’s van.

Most people, though, would go without turkey and made do with 'mock' - or meatless – versions of Christmas favourites from recipes created by the Ministry of Food.

Although, some traditions were stuck to just as rigidly as before.

[On This Day: WW2 Blitz begins over London]

Tramps, whose numbers rose partly due to bomb damage, are seen dropping a sixpence into Christmas pudding mixture at a shelter in Hungerford, Berkshire.

Although, these men – and indeed most people - would have gone without many of the dried fruit pieces, brandy and butter that we today consider essential.

The half-pound bag of sugar one of the men drops in represented a week’s worth of rations – and each would have to contribute all they had to sweeten the giant desert.

In a house, children are filmed following the 'make-do-and-mend' mantra that pervaded the era – by re-using old decoration and fashioning new ones from scraps.

A boy hangs up some mistletoe using a piece of strings that could easily have been saved for the last six years.

And a girl decorates and kisses a photograph of her absent – or possibly dead - father, whose picture on the mantlepiece shows him in uniform.

Elsewhere, carollers – bathed in outside light that would have been forbidden during the wartime blackouts – sing The First Noel.

Meanwhile, looking though the window, a wife is filmed holding tightly the one precious thing she wanted for Christmas – her husband.

Upstairs, their young daughter prays by her bedside and thanks God for 'bringing daddy home'.