Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Optimism opens the door to great things.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

Bark louder, little dog.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

The willow is too close to the house.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL

I really should read my own blog.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Ghosts of Holidays Past: Looks Like Trouble To Me Edition

Ghosts of Holidays Past: Looks Like Trouble To Me Edition

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This post is in: 

Frosty shared these photos from the early 1950s.
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Ghosts of Holidays Past 2
1st Xmas: My twin brother and I are about 2 months old in this picture.
That’s me on the right, my brother on the left.

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Ghosts of Holidays Past 1
2nd Xmas. That’s my brother.
I love the fence up protecting the tree.

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Ghosts of Holidays Past

3rd Xmas. I think this is the 3rd, although it might be the second.
I’m on the right, my brother is on the left.

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And now Kattails:


Probably 1955, Montclair, NJ
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Who is this dude?? My sister heheh.

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A couple of years later, she’s still skeptical

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Reader Interactions

57Comments

  1. 1.

    PsiFighter37

    A great way to remind me that the readership of this blog is way, way older than I am, and I feel like I have aged exponentially over the past year and a half.

  2. 2.

    WaterGirl

    Frosty, you guys look like you are levitating in the photo when you were 3.

    Kattails, I am sorry to see your sister crying, but the look on Santa’s face is classic.

  6. 6.

    JanieM

    So many things —

    Frosty’s mom is just like, “Yeah, I’m just about managing. Take the picture already before they squirm away.”

    The pajama feet in the third one are funny — probably PJs a couple of sizes too big, right? So they’d last for a while….at least, that was a thing when I was a kid. That and hand-me-downs.

    The Santa pics in this series have been a revelation. The guys who play Santa must have to have a great sense of humor. The last pic — I’m still laughing at her expression.

  7. 7.

    West of the Rockies

    I have been loving this series!  Thank you to all who’ve made it happen.  It’s  been a balm.

  9. 9.

    dr. bloor

    @JanieM:

    The last pic — I’m still laughing at her expression.

    “You come near my chimney on Christmas Eve, and you’re in for a world of hurt.”

  10. 10.

    Danielx

    Along with many other items we have to give up, things start going downhill when you have to give up pjs with feet.

  16. 16.

    PsiFighter37

    @WaterGirl: Feels like a deep minority. At the couple of BJ meetups I went to some years ago, I was the youngest participant, and it wasn’t close.

    I am feeling “content” if that means taking a marginal amount of time off from work, vacationing in an unnatural fashion, and still waking up before 7 AM every day. Raising a kid is a hard fucking grind. I cannot wait for the day, in the (distant?) years to come, when my wife and I can jet off without a second thought.

    Also, I have had 3 cocktails and 2 beers, so that may have something to do with it.

    PS. Cole, tell the Steelers to stop sucking ass. I have their defense, and I am only in the championship game despite of them. Holy cripes they have dropped off a cliff in the past month.

  17. 17.

    WaterGirl

    @PsiFighter37: I had a friend who used to say “you can’t fight the river”.  It seemed from your comments earlier that, even though your situation is tough and hasn’t changed, maybe you aren’t fighting the river anymore.

    If that makes any sense.

  18. 18.

    beth

    Oh Kattails our mothers obviously took the same “how to cut your child’s bangs crooked” class. Those haircuts could be me and my sister, circa 1958.

  22. 22.

    Comrade Colette

    @PsiFighter37: 

    A great way to remind me that the readership of this blog is way, way older than I am, and I feel like I have aged exponentially over the past year and a half.

    Same, and same – and I turn 60 in three days. It’s mostly reinforced that the cliché that “you’re only as old as you feel” has some basis in shared experience. Long ago I used to hear old-ish people say that they don’t feel any older than when they were 30, and think they were idiots. Now I’m either an idiot or a member of the majority. (Or both.)

  24. 24.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @zhena gogolia:

    Eating that real metal tinsel we used to have could be fatal.

    IIRC, it was made of lead. I remember that the individual strands were hella heavy for something that looked so gossamer.

    And speaking of Christmas lethality: Do you remember the “snow” that was packaged in bolts to be swathed around the base of the tree? Fucking stuff was made of spun glass, and it could cut your fingers to shreds. Yet it looked sweet and delicious, like vanilla cotton candy. I wonder how many kids sliced up their tongues or larynges because that “snow” was just so tempting.

  25. 25.

    mrmoshpotato

    @dr. bloor:

    “You come near my chimney on Christmas Eve, and you’re in for a world of hurt.”

    Haha, and delivered in a completely non-menacing way.

  26. 26.

    TomatoQueen

    Our first Xmas Eve in New Haven, CT (1962) was in a tiny apartment that had bare hardwood floors. Silly us put the tree up with the tinsel dangling and glass ornaments on the lower branches. Around 4pm or so, crashbangmiaou! as we discover PingPing the SealPoint Siamese eating the broken ornaments and the tinsel, with others lying in shards on the beautiful bare floor. So the rest of Xmas Eve was spent at the vet up the hill as he carefully removed all the bits from PingPing’s mouth and tummy. Thus began the vet relationship which lasted until he retired in the late 90s, a lovely loving man. Ping Ping lived to age 22, in fact all our Siamese lived to at least 20, yodeling all the way. And no glass ornaments ever again and no fucking tinsel.

  27. 27.

    BigJimSlade

    These pictures remind me that it must’ve been so exciting once the world turned into color! :-p
    Happy Holidays everyone!

  28. 28.

    Kattails

    @beth: LOL !! I probably gave the hairdressers too hard a time; and anyway, nobody knew how to cut curly hair.  Always ended up with Mami Eisenhower bangs. Cut ’em short so you don’t have to do it again soon….

    @dr. bloor: She’s lightened up a bit over time, he’d get cookies and handmade ornaments now.  But glad you enjoyed the pics.

  29. 29.

    dww44

    @BigJimSlade: Lead aside, I kinda miss the tinsel on Christmas trees.  I was in charge of that in my home growing up.  Now that I’m an oldie and confined because of Covid, we put up a tree with lights and somehow, because I’ve been so busy with an arts non-profit raising money to buy a home for the organization, I never got around to putting any ornaments on it.  Would just give it up altogether but there’s a Zoom family meet-up tomorrow and I expect they will be expecting to see a truly decorated tree.

  30. 30.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    @WaterGirl: I just finished putting a Barbie Dream House together.  Thank dog for YouTube tutorials. Love the old pics.  Merry Xmas, all.

  31. 31.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @PsiFighter37:

    Imagine how I must feel, dude. I think M^4 is like one of the other young commenters here and he’s in his 30s. Also, that first Santa Claus kind of looks like Don Draper from Mad Men if he dressed as Santa

  32. 32.

    Kattails

    Frosty, I’ll bet those feet pj’s lasted for a couple of years while you grew into them. Also good for sliding down hallways.  Judging from the look on your faces, in that first pic Mom isn’t quite sure about this whole thing yet and has a pretty tight grip.

  33. 33.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @TomatoQueen:

    You bring back memories. It was our Kaboodle who brought down a menacing Christmas tree — not while we were asleep in our beds, but while we were out carousing.

    Hamish, my black cat with Siamese ancestry on the father’s side (which manifested in the chirping and yowling, and the kink in the tail) had little use for Christmas trees. Instead, he would launch himself to the top of the tallest cabinet or bookcase in the room and stare disdainfully down upon the tree-capping star.

  34. 34.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kattails: Frosty, I’ll bet those feet pj’s lasted for a couple of years while you grew into them. Also good for sliding down hallways.

    We loved sliding down our parents’ hallway in socks as kids.  Our footy-pajamas were grippy sadly.

  35. 35.

    frosty

    @PsiFighter37: Aging exponentially – kids will do that to you! Add COVID on top of that and my hat’s off to you. My advice, with two grown boys, is to pay attention every day. Twenty years goes by in a blink.

  36. 36.

    HumboldtBlue

    You wanna talk multi-tasking?

    Try mixing up your sausages, onion, and sauce while busting out the Xmas traditions.

    Since 2014 I have spent Xmas Eve calling my grand nieces and nephews as Elvis Elfington. It started with just two little ones, 3 and 2 at the time, and it’s grown to seven.

    So this nasal-voiced-Bowery-affecting-union-shop-boss calling from the Workshop at Elf Union No. 1 in the North Pole takes time out each Xmas Eve to remind the kids that Santa’s on his way and then delivers some humorous inside baseball family stuff.

    Each kid gets a call-out and a special nickname — Judy “The top book reader of 2020 and awesome bike rider!!!” Jones — or — Bobby “I can’t find my pants” Smith (Bobby is special, leave him be) — and they get an update on Santa’s current location (Jersey City Jersey is a standard for the East Coasters and Denver for the Westies) as the night gets long.

    They are also reminded that Santa can’t show up unless they’re asleep. I don’t think it helps the sleeping part when I get a text from Mama No. 1 “they are beside themselves, and they just can’t believe it” but hey, ya gotta make the call.

    I lost a call this year. It was bound to happen. Eleven years old comes really fucking quick and one of my originals opted out having figured out the whole charade. Shit, she figured it out two years ago, the li’l smart cookie, and I wonder if she isn’t a bit miffed at me.

    The last call is coming up.

    On a night in a year where being apart is not voluntary we still get to share one silly Xmas thing that brings a smile and a wink.

    I miss my friends and family.

  37. 37.

    frosty

    @Kattails: The family story is that Mom looked at dad on the way to the hospital and said “I’m not ready for this.” His answer was something about how the way she felt wasn’t going to change things.

    They found out they had twins when the doc said “Oh look, here’s another one!”  No ultrasound, of course, didn’t do Xrays thank Dog, and never heard two separate heartbeats.

  40. 40.

    rikyrah

    What I remember is all the think pieces in entertainment about tv star Bruce Willis getting $5 million for Die Hard. That was unheard of back then.

    It's time for #DieHard. This was Alan Rickman's first film at the age of 41. It's an astonishing movie debut. Here's the original trailer before anybody realised it was the greatest action movie of all time. And it's a Christmas movie, his wife's called Holly, for Christ's sake pic.twitter.com/B61D7rO5aR— The Sting (@TheSting17) December 24, 2020

  41. 41.

    Kattails

    @frosty: “oh look here’s another one!”  OMG. Those were the good old days.  8-)

    So which one of you is the oldest & gets to boss the other one around?

  44. 44.

    frosty

    @Kattails: I beat him out by 2 minutes. But somehow he ended up the alpha except for one period in college when he was in the wrong school and feeling adrift and I wasn’t. It was VERY strange.

  46. 46.

    frosty

    @rikyrah: Rickman’s first film??? He came across as an accomplished actor, but maybe he had years of stage work on his resume by then. I loved everything he did.

  47. 47.

    bluefish

    epic photos … thank  you … gorgeous … thnx for the word too

    grlll, i gave my newly acquired bj calendar along with some

    other prezzies, tiny things, to my neighbor — some true

    love … the power of photography — thx again for  yr

    message to us — saw my 95 year old daddy for first time

    in months … old man going  — cried all the way home

    can’t figure out why am double spaced cuz old

    heartbroken, just counting the days

  48. 48.

    noncarborundum

    That second picture … I swear there’s one of me at the same age that’s almost identical.  Same outfit, same haircut, same toys.  I don’t think we had a fence around our tree, though.

  50. 50.

    Comrade Colette

    @frosty:

    They found out they had twins when the doc said “Oh look, here’s another one!”

    Yoicks! Our neighbors back in the 70s had a similar but even weirder experience – she was morbidly obese, took months to even figure out she was pregnant. She had a C section pretty close to term, doc was starting to stitch her up when the nurse noticed another tiny hand in there. Backed off, fished out #2. Everyone was (and is) fine, but what a shock! Routine ultrasounds have eliminated a lot of surprises.

  52. 52.

    evodevo

    @zhena gogolia: PLUS ornaments in those days were glass, and when they broke produced a LOT of sharp edges…

    Oh, I remember those toy dogs with the legs that went round and round, too!

  53. 53.

    trnc

    @Frosty: Nice pics! Around here, we see “Tree Protection Area” signs in front of wooded areas near construction. These are unfailingly followed by every single tree in the area being leveled for said construction. For that reason, I expected the next pic of your Christmas tree to be a stump in a stand.

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