?Send in your holiday pics, everybody! We’ll run them from now until New Year’s Eve. ?
Who knew all the BJ peeps were so adorable when we were kids?
? All holidays matter. ?
? ? ? ? ?
Grumpy Old Railroader
So cute! I will let him share another name in the comments, if desired.
? ? ? ? ?
opiejeanie’s Grandma Mabel on the left and her sister Maude, and scary Santa
Probably taken about 1916-1917. Maude was the oldest surviving child of 8 and 14 years older, Grandma was youngest for 2 years until her awful sister Pearl was born (I have stories!).
opiejeanie’s Uncle Walter
Christmas 1917, in Grandpa’s studio in Downers Grove, Illinois.
? ? ? ? ?
matching jammies!
miki circa 1959 huntsville alabama
? ? ? ? ?
karen marie
The scrawny tree is from the first Christmas in my Myrtle Street, Boston apartment
circa 1982
? ? ? ? ?
This is a Christmas photo of debbie with two of her three brothers and Santa.
“My mother cut my bangs. Sadly.”
I love these pics! Thanks for doing this WaterGirl and thanks to all the jackals sending these sweet pics.
In today’s world, my daughter sent me this year’s official pic of her three kids with Santa taken at the local mall. My grandkids had removed their masks for the pic (the photographers allowed that just for the pic) but Santa had a bright red mask on. Good for him!
But what an iconic piece of history that pic will be for them in the future. Back in the pandemic times, Santa wore a red mask! Or will Santa keep wearing a mask in all the malls of America to stay healthy from colds and flu?
7.
Soprano2
I would send a pic but I don’t have any that are on the computer. These are super cute, thanks for them!
8.
brendancalling
No childhood holiday pics to share til I get to Philly sometime tomorrow, at which point this post will be waaaay down the list. However, an update on the Canada situation. With Montreal in a state of emergency and the rest of the province locked down as well, the boy isn’t coming for Christmas for the second year in a row.
But the border is still open for vaccinated people to cross by land, so after work today I am wrapping the presents and making a surprise Santa trip north to make sure we get to see each other (however briefly) and to make sure he gets his gifts (and there are some good ones in there).
It’s a shit situation to be sure, but we’re doing the best we can—that’s all we can do, right?
9.
OzarkHillbilly
@WaterGirl: Sitting on the side of a very narrow and crooked road at the bottom of a holler with no cell signal and an overheating engine.
@brendancalling: We are doing these through the end of next week, so surely you’ll have time to find a picture once you return from Canada?
16.
brendancalling
@WaterGirl: Yeah, I should have some pictures later this week.
As for the very quick Canada trip, I signed up for this kind of stuff when I became a dad. “Sacrifice for your kids, and do so gladly” is part of the job description, after all! I’m happy to head up—I’ll probably stop at a weed dispensary en route and give myself a Christmas present of my own!
17.
Grumpy Old Railroader
Looking at my younger self in bib overalls, I guess even at an early age I was destined to be a railroader.
Today is 12/22, but I had to manually post this at 9am because I I had accidentally scheduled for 5 am on 12/23. Along with the 12/23 post for 12/23!
It was my scheduling that was faulty! I had both scheduled to post tomorrow at 5 am.
I updated my original comment just now for clarity.
22.
Jager
My English great grandmother Alice was a teetotaler, one year at Christmas, my dad mixed her a drink and set it on the table next to her chair, then he snapped a picture. When she saw it her reaction was priceless, think of the Queen Mother muttering “Bullshit” under her breath. I have a copy of the picture, but, I’ll be damned if I’m going to rummage through boxes to find it this morning.
23.
RobertB
I remember the stylish silver Christmas tree with the three (four?) color wheel that would make the tree red/green/blue as it turned. I think you can still get them if you want to go all retro.
24.
zhena gogolia
@RobertB: Oh, I wanted one of those so bad! Had to be content with boring old evergreens.
@RobertB: That’s exactly the tree and rotating colored light we have courtesy of eBay. We didn’t put it up this year because nobody’s coming but next year…
@cope: My wife and I have an artificial evergreen garland that has flashing lights that flash with the music as it plays a couple of verses of a Christmas carol. It knows maybe 10 songs. It’s not even midi, just a simple tone playing one note at a time. We’ve had one for maybe 30 years, and our old one finally gave up the ghost. We found a new one on the web at an exorbitant price, that we paid because it’s a Christmas tradition.
29.
opiejeanne
@Lapassionara: Walter was my dad’s older brother. Uncle Walter. Sorry I didn’t make that clear.
My grandfather took that photo of his firstborn.
30.
zhena gogolia
@opiejeanne: I thought your husband must be quite old if that was him!
31.
opiejeanne
The photo of Uncle Walter is probably Christmas 1917, in Grandpa’s studio in Downers Grove, Illinois.
The photo with my grandmother, she’s on the left, her older sister Maude is on the right. Probably taken about 1916-1917. Maude was the oldest surviving child of 8 and 14 years older, Grandma was youngest for 2 years until her awful sister Pearl was born (I have stories!).
32.
Lapassionara
@opiejeanne: I do think Walter looks like the guy who brought you to the meetup. Hmmmm. I’ll check the photos I took.
33.
opiejeanne
@zhena gogolia: LOL! Yes, at least 104 years old. Walter looks to be about a year old, so a year before my dad was born. Circa 1917. Tastes in Christmas decorations and trees have changed since then. My grandma still had that tree when I was a kid, made of paper and wire it folded up for storage. She folded it, anyway.
34.
opiejeanne
@Lapassionara: Dave used to look like he could be a long lost family member.
35.
Lapassionara
@opiejeanne: I sent one of our meet up photos to Watergirl. I do think there is a likeness.
36.
opiejeanne
@Lapassionara: I’ve diligently traced his family tree and mine. Mine was easier; anyway, he’s not related as far back as I can get, which is 1800 on one possible line, pre-1600 on the other.
37.
opiejeanne
@Lapassionara: Take a look at my dad. Grandpa took great delight in his “triplets”.
@RobertB: One of Dad’s clients gave him one of those aluminum trees with the color wheel in the 1960s, and we used it one or two Christmases, but Dad was leery of putting lights on it. They were fairly common in businesses and looked really nice with a single color of glass ornaments. A friend only used blue ones on hers, ours were a mixture of colors and shapes.
There was a tv station in Los Angeles that had a show host called Engineer Bill; his show was on during dinnertime. He had a big model train layout on his set, had kids as guests on his show, played a game called “Red light-Green light” to get kids to drink their milk, and showed cartoons. A lot of kids wore those overalls back then, as well as “coonskin” caps.
42.
RobertB
@opiejeanne: My father-in-law always wanted to have a pure white Christmas tree with blue ornaments. He had seen one somewhere, and loved it. I don’t know why he didn’t just make it happen, since he was the official Obtainer Of the Christmas Tree – maybe he didn’t want to fight his wife over it.
ETA: and on no evidence whatsoever, I thought that the color wheel Christmas tree style didn’t use lights or garland. Very futuristic/minimalist sort of thing.
43.
zhena gogolia
@opiejeanne: I’ll learn more soon. I’m fine just can’t do anything for myself or write. I was looking at a Hitchcockian flock of birds while walking fast and went down. No sidewalks on our road and I think my foot went off the edge.
@RobertB: It didn’t use lights on the tree, that’s why we had the color wheel. But people strung lights on them anyway, and there were fires.
46.
opiejeanne
@Lapassionara: Grandpa was a professional photographer. He moved to Hollywood several times between 1909 and 1920 when he finally stayed. He worked for the studios as a still photographer and I have a lot of his photos from that period. They were just stored in an old dress box, so some are not in great shape. I tried to scan all of them and spent a lot of time fighting with Dad’s scanner until I decided to just bring my own.
47.
RobertB
@opiejeanne: My wife’s story is that her grandma had one, and the branches were all in individual sleeves, and inserted one at a time in holes in the trunk. She said she never got to put them in because her older sister insisted she was too young to do it.
Those old Christmas tree bulbs must have been crazy dangerous back then. ISTR lots of Public Service Announcements telling you to be careful not to burn your house down because of dry trees or bad wiring.
48.
scav
O! I love the sad poinsettia in front of scary Santa. Also, a (teeeeeeeny) glimpse of Downers Grove ca 1917. My lot would have been in Hinsdale with less money for photographs, so I have to borrow. And, just to totally scramble the logic, where is scary Santa exactly?
49.
cain
Dat B&W TV in one of the pics – so iconic! ha!
Sorry no Christmas pics that I’m aware of growing up. I still have all the ornaments that I made in grade school – so when we do put up the tree we tend to hang it.
50.
jonas
Man, mid-century America was sure enamored with tinsel.
51.
jonas
@RobertB: When I was a kid I can remember being fascinated with the trees on the lot that had been sprayed with that white flocking stuff and always hoped we would get one. Alas, my parents thought they looked stupid and always went with the traditional, unflocked tree. C’est la vie.
@jonas: Tinsel — my super frugal dad would collect it very carefully and put it back on its cardboard backing to be re-used the following year. I never used it as an adult, and most of the trees sold around where i live nowdays wouldn’t accommodate it anyhow, because they’re too densely branched. In fact, I don’t like them, because there’s not enough space for ornaments to hang freely.
This year I bought a relatively scraggly tree that had been left behind in the field because no one else wanted it. But the spacing of the branches is great!
55.
RobertB
@jonas: The places I went to get real trees would flock them for extra $$$. My wife and I could take it or leave it, so we never bothered. The past few years it’s been artificial trees.
Live tree story: One year we were dead set on a live tree, as in not chopped down tree, with its roots still in a big bag of dirt. That thing was a f’in chore to move and set up. After the holidays, we put it outside in the bucket we were using in the house, because we were going to take it to my father-in-law to plant it when we had a chance. So the day comes, and we can’t get that tree out of the bucket, because temperatures were in the teens, and the water and dirt in the bucket had frozen solid. But this wasn’t just water and dirt; this was water, the root bag, and about 50 lbs of gravel to prop it up, all froze into a big lump. Somehow my wife and I got it in the back of our pickup, and drove four hours to her parents. Four hours driving at 70 mph in zero-degree weather blew every needle off of that poor tree.
We managed to get that tree out of the truck. There was too much snow on the ground to plant it, so we left it at the top of the hill and told her dad, “There’s that tree, good luck!” My father-in-law said he tried to pick it up and it rolled down to the bottom of the hill, dragging him along with it. That was the tree’s final revenge; unfortunately it didn’t survive that much harsh treatment.
56.
J R in WV
Years ago we had accumulated a stack of scrap lumber and packed tight brush, scrappy logs, etc, maybe 8 feet tall. There was an old V large christmas tree in there near the bottom, which I intended to use to light the whole thing for a spring party.
That old pine tree exploded into flames with the first match, and the bonfire took off like it was doused in gasoline! I could instantly see that if an Xmas tree took off in a living room or dining room, the house was lost at that instant, all you could do was everyone run for their lives.
Be warned — Xmas trees are explosively flammable from the git-go…
57.
opiejeanne
@scav: I’m not sure what you’re asking, but the scary Santa is a big ornament hanging (or standing?) in the tree.
I have several pictures of that house in Downers Grove, taken back then and more from about 15 years ago. Last I checked it was going to be torn down.
@opiejeanne: No problem, it was great for conversation. -)
60.
scav
@opiejeanne: So, both places are in Downers Grove, the home with the Santa and the photographer’s studio with Uncle Walt. I knew the later, wasn’t sure about the former. That is a fancy interior — all that grand leaded glass. Thanks!
61.
opiejeanne
@scav: Yes. If you click through on the links I posted, you can see my account and look for downers grove in the search thingie. There’s a photo of several other houses in Downers Grove, including both great grandparents’ houses.
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Christmas 1917, in Grandpa’s studio in Downers Grove, Illinois.
OzarkHillbilly
Bah! Humbug!
WaterGirl
One might think that with 12/22 in the title, I might have scheduled it to auto post on 12/22 and not 12/23. Alas, that was not the case.
edited for clarity
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly:
I think you’re slacking, Ozark, alternating days like that. Where was your “Bah! Humbug!” yesterday?
HinTN
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ll see your epithet and raise you a Hah Bucking Fumbug to cover the absence noted by @WaterGirl:
?
raven
Well, I guess I was little. . .130 lbs at 18. Here was our tree.
Scout211
I love these pics! Thanks for doing this WaterGirl and thanks to all the jackals sending these sweet pics.
In today’s world, my daughter sent me this year’s official pic of her three kids with Santa taken at the local mall. My grandkids had removed their masks for the pic (the photographers allowed that just for the pic) but Santa had a bright red mask on. Good for him!
But what an iconic piece of history that pic will be for them in the future. Back in the pandemic times, Santa wore a red mask! Or will Santa keep wearing a mask in all the malls of America to stay healthy from colds and flu?
Soprano2
I would send a pic but I don’t have any that are on the computer. These are super cute, thanks for them!
brendancalling
No childhood holiday pics to share til I get to Philly sometime tomorrow, at which point this post will be waaaay down the list. However, an update on the Canada situation. With Montreal in a state of emergency and the rest of the province locked down as well, the boy isn’t coming for Christmas for the second year in a row.
But the border is still open for vaccinated people to cross by land, so after work today I am wrapping the presents and making a surprise Santa trip north to make sure we get to see each other (however briefly) and to make sure he gets his gifts (and there are some good ones in there).
It’s a shit situation to be sure, but we’re doing the best we can—that’s all we can do, right?
OzarkHillbilly
@WaterGirl: Sitting on the side of a very narrow and crooked road at the bottom of a holler with no cell signal and an overheating engine.
Or was that Monday?
WaterGirl
@Soprano2: You could take a picture of the picture and then send that! Instant electronic version.
WaterGirl
@brendancalling: What a great idea!
Lapassionara
I think Walter may be Mr. Opiejeanne, who escorted Opiejeanne to our St. Louis meetup, in the time BC (before COVID).
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: Well, we got a bah humbug on Monday and now again on Wednesday, but only 2 or 3 seems kind of stingy, don’t you think? :-)
By the way, autocorrect tried to make that bra humbug, but the judges wouldn’t allow it to stay that way.
WaterGirl
@Lapassionara: thank you!
WaterGirl
@brendancalling: We are doing these through the end of next week, so surely you’ll have time to find a picture once you return from Canada?
brendancalling
@WaterGirl: Yeah, I should have some pictures later this week.
As for the very quick Canada trip, I signed up for this kind of stuff when I became a dad. “Sacrifice for your kids, and do so gladly” is part of the job description, after all! I’m happy to head up—I’ll probably stop at a weed dispensary en route and give myself a Christmas present of my own!
Grumpy Old Railroader
Looking at my younger self in bib overalls, I guess even at an early age I was destined to be a railroader.
cope
@WaterGirl: Confused. Today is the 22nd so…?
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
Uh, today is 12/22.
WaterGirl
@Grumpy Old Railroader: Maybe so!
But you were clearly not destined to be Grumpy!!! That smile slays me.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: @cope:
Today is 12/22, but I had to manually post this at 9am because I I had accidentally scheduled for 5 am on 12/23. Along with the 12/23 post for 12/23!
It was my scheduling that was faulty! I had both scheduled to post tomorrow at 5 am.
I updated my original comment just now for clarity.
Jager
My English great grandmother Alice was a teetotaler, one year at Christmas, my dad mixed her a drink and set it on the table next to her chair, then he snapped a picture. When she saw it her reaction was priceless, think of the Queen Mother muttering “Bullshit” under her breath. I have a copy of the picture, but, I’ll be damned if I’m going to rummage through boxes to find it this morning.
RobertB
I remember the stylish silver Christmas tree with the three (four?) color wheel that would make the tree red/green/blue as it turned. I think you can still get them if you want to go all retro.
zhena gogolia
@RobertB: Oh, I wanted one of those so bad! Had to be content with boring old evergreens.
cope
@RobertB: That’s exactly the tree and rotating colored light we have courtesy of eBay. We didn’t put it up this year because nobody’s coming but next year…
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
LOL! John doesn’t pay you enough!
MagdaInBlack
@cope: I love those.
RobertB
@cope: My wife and I have an artificial evergreen garland that has flashing lights that flash with the music as it plays a couple of verses of a Christmas carol. It knows maybe 10 songs. It’s not even midi, just a simple tone playing one note at a time. We’ve had one for maybe 30 years, and our old one finally gave up the ghost. We found a new one on the web at an exorbitant price, that we paid because it’s a Christmas tradition.
opiejeanne
@Lapassionara: Walter was my dad’s older brother. Uncle Walter. Sorry I didn’t make that clear.
My grandfather took that photo of his firstborn.
zhena gogolia
@opiejeanne: I thought your husband must be quite old if that was him!
opiejeanne
The photo of Uncle Walter is probably Christmas 1917, in Grandpa’s studio in Downers Grove, Illinois.
The photo with my grandmother, she’s on the left, her older sister Maude is on the right. Probably taken about 1916-1917. Maude was the oldest surviving child of 8 and 14 years older, Grandma was youngest for 2 years until her awful sister Pearl was born (I have stories!).
Lapassionara
@opiejeanne: I do think Walter looks like the guy who brought you to the meetup. Hmmmm. I’ll check the photos I took.
opiejeanne
@zhena gogolia: LOL! Yes, at least 104 years old. Walter looks to be about a year old, so a year before my dad was born. Circa 1917. Tastes in Christmas decorations and trees have changed since then. My grandma still had that tree when I was a kid, made of paper and wire it folded up for storage. She folded it, anyway.
opiejeanne
@Lapassionara: Dave used to look like he could be a long lost family member.
Lapassionara
@opiejeanne: I sent one of our meet up photos to Watergirl. I do think there is a likeness.
opiejeanne
@Lapassionara: I’ve diligently traced his family tree and mine. Mine was easier; anyway, he’s not related as far back as I can get, which is 1800 on one possible line, pre-1600 on the other.
opiejeanne
@Lapassionara: Take a look at my dad. Grandpa took great delight in his “triplets”.
https://flic.kr/p/kW25Z
opiejeanne
@zhena gogolia: How’s your elbow? I never heard how it was injured.
opiejeanne
@opiejeanne: Another photo of my dad.
https://flic.kr/p/ePuC2
opiejeanne
@RobertB: One of Dad’s clients gave him one of those aluminum trees with the color wheel in the 1960s, and we used it one or two Christmases, but Dad was leery of putting lights on it. They were fairly common in businesses and looked really nice with a single color of glass ornaments. A friend only used blue ones on hers, ours were a mixture of colors and shapes.
opiejeanne
@Grumpy Old Railroader: You don’t look grumpy in that photo.
There was a tv station in Los Angeles that had a show host called Engineer Bill; his show was on during dinnertime. He had a big model train layout on his set, had kids as guests on his show, played a game called “Red light-Green light” to get kids to drink their milk, and showed cartoons. A lot of kids wore those overalls back then, as well as “coonskin” caps.
RobertB
@opiejeanne: My father-in-law always wanted to have a pure white Christmas tree with blue ornaments. He had seen one somewhere, and loved it. I don’t know why he didn’t just make it happen, since he was the official Obtainer Of the Christmas Tree – maybe he didn’t want to fight his wife over it.
ETA: and on no evidence whatsoever, I thought that the color wheel Christmas tree style didn’t use lights or garland. Very futuristic/minimalist sort of thing.
zhena gogolia
@opiejeanne: I’ll learn more soon. I’m fine just can’t do anything for myself or write. I was looking at a Hitchcockian flock of birds while walking fast and went down. No sidewalks on our road and I think my foot went off the edge.
Lapassionara
@opiejeanne: wow. Amazing.
opiejeanne
@RobertB: It didn’t use lights on the tree, that’s why we had the color wheel. But people strung lights on them anyway, and there were fires.
opiejeanne
@Lapassionara: Grandpa was a professional photographer. He moved to Hollywood several times between 1909 and 1920 when he finally stayed. He worked for the studios as a still photographer and I have a lot of his photos from that period. They were just stored in an old dress box, so some are not in great shape. I tried to scan all of them and spent a lot of time fighting with Dad’s scanner until I decided to just bring my own.
RobertB
@opiejeanne: My wife’s story is that her grandma had one, and the branches were all in individual sleeves, and inserted one at a time in holes in the trunk. She said she never got to put them in because her older sister insisted she was too young to do it.
Those old Christmas tree bulbs must have been crazy dangerous back then. ISTR lots of Public Service Announcements telling you to be careful not to burn your house down because of dry trees or bad wiring.
scav
O! I love the sad poinsettia in front of scary Santa. Also, a (teeeeeeeny) glimpse of Downers Grove ca 1917. My lot would have been in Hinsdale with less money for photographs, so I have to borrow. And, just to totally scramble the logic, where is scary Santa exactly?
cain
Dat B&W TV in one of the pics – so iconic! ha!
Sorry no Christmas pics that I’m aware of growing up. I still have all the ornaments that I made in grade school – so when we do put up the tree we tend to hang it.
jonas
Man, mid-century America was sure enamored with tinsel.
jonas
@RobertB: When I was a kid I can remember being fascinated with the trees on the lot that had been sprayed with that white flocking stuff and always hoped we would get one. Alas, my parents thought they looked stupid and always went with the traditional, unflocked tree. C’est la vie.
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne: Okay, all info about Walter and Grandma and Maude has been corrected for posterity in the post above!
zhena gogolia
@jonas: OH YEAH
JanieM
@jonas: Tinsel — my super frugal dad would collect it very carefully and put it back on its cardboard backing to be re-used the following year. I never used it as an adult, and most of the trees sold around where i live nowdays wouldn’t accommodate it anyhow, because they’re too densely branched. In fact, I don’t like them, because there’s not enough space for ornaments to hang freely.
This year I bought a relatively scraggly tree that had been left behind in the field because no one else wanted it. But the spacing of the branches is great!
RobertB
@jonas: The places I went to get real trees would flock them for extra $$$. My wife and I could take it or leave it, so we never bothered. The past few years it’s been artificial trees.
Live tree story: One year we were dead set on a live tree, as in not chopped down tree, with its roots still in a big bag of dirt. That thing was a f’in chore to move and set up. After the holidays, we put it outside in the bucket we were using in the house, because we were going to take it to my father-in-law to plant it when we had a chance. So the day comes, and we can’t get that tree out of the bucket, because temperatures were in the teens, and the water and dirt in the bucket had frozen solid. But this wasn’t just water and dirt; this was water, the root bag, and about 50 lbs of gravel to prop it up, all froze into a big lump. Somehow my wife and I got it in the back of our pickup, and drove four hours to her parents. Four hours driving at 70 mph in zero-degree weather blew every needle off of that poor tree.
We managed to get that tree out of the truck. There was too much snow on the ground to plant it, so we left it at the top of the hill and told her dad, “There’s that tree, good luck!” My father-in-law said he tried to pick it up and it rolled down to the bottom of the hill, dragging him along with it. That was the tree’s final revenge; unfortunately it didn’t survive that much harsh treatment.
J R in WV
Years ago we had accumulated a stack of scrap lumber and packed tight brush, scrappy logs, etc, maybe 8 feet tall. There was an old V large christmas tree in there near the bottom, which I intended to use to light the whole thing for a spring party.
That old pine tree exploded into flames with the first match, and the bonfire took off like it was doused in gasoline! I could instantly see that if an Xmas tree took off in a living room or dining room, the house was lost at that instant, all you could do was everyone run for their lives.
Be warned — Xmas trees are explosively flammable from the git-go…
opiejeanne
@scav: I’m not sure what you’re asking, but the scary Santa is a big ornament hanging (or standing?) in the tree.
I have several pictures of that house in Downers Grove, taken back then and more from about 15 years ago. Last I checked it was going to be torn down.
The exterior: https://flic.kr/p/jFsNa
Grandma Mabel in the dining room: https://flic.kr/p/juW1o
opiejeanne
@WaterGirl: Thanks. I should have included the info, so I’m sorry about that.
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne: No problem, it was great for conversation. -)
scav
@opiejeanne: So, both places are in Downers Grove, the home with the Santa and the photographer’s studio with Uncle Walt. I knew the later, wasn’t sure about the former. That is a fancy interior — all that grand leaded glass. Thanks!
opiejeanne
@scav: Yes. If you click through on the links I posted, you can see my account and look for downers grove in the search thingie. There’s a photo of several other houses in Downers Grove, including both great grandparents’ houses.