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Hammers Get The Bird
By Roger Hillier

Christmas Changes for The Hammers
At Christmas time it is an opportunity to reflect on how football’s approach to the festive time has changed over the decades. Let's look back on a couple of festive recollections, though I’m sure there are many more. Even ignoring the more recent players’ Christmas parties with their well publicised antics.

Today teams play on Boxing Day but in the past Christmas was a very busy time for professional footballers and spectators.  In the 1940s and 1950s teams would regularly have back to back league fixtures on Christmas and Boxing Day.  

Typically the back to back games would be home and away matches against the same local team.  The last time the Hammers had Christmas back to back games was in December 1958, the season after winning promotion to Division One.  

On Christmas Day the Hammers were hosts to Spurs and then reversed the fixture for Boxing Day.  The club were recipients of good Christmas tidings as they wrapped up four league points from completing the double over Spurs. A 2-1 home win was followed by a 4-1 victory at White Hart Lane.  

Turkeys!

There is no truth in any rumours that the only Christmas turkeys you will see at Upton Park will be those running around the pitch. One custom at the club that has long since faded and died, is the tradition that each player would be given a turkey for the family Christmas table.  

This particular custom seems to have been started at the Boleyn Ground in Charles Paynter’s managerial reign and ended in the mid-1970s.

Below are a couple of photos showing the players receiving their turkey's in the 1960s

The shot below sees the players queuing up behind a butcher’s van for their bird after a training session at Green Siley Weir on 4 December 1959.

Alan Sealey, Jim Standen and Roger Hugo

all get the Bird...

This local press picture captures Peter Brabrook, Billy Bonds, Geoff Hurst, Martin Peters and John Sissons receiving their Christmas fare in December 1967.

Left to right: Vic Keeble, Malcolm Musgrove, John Bond partially hidden by Noel Dwyer, Harry Obeney, Ken Brown, (youth player), Mike Grice, Bobby Moore and Phil Woosnam.  

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