We’ve had such great pics for the season, thanks so much to everyone who has sent something in!
Today is a bonus Saturday post. We’ll have more holiday posts next week. On Monday, we’ll have Albatrossity with birds that should be ornaments, then Tuesday we have a cat’s Christmas, and the rest of the week is filled with posts of gorgeous holiday lights.
These are from Vicki.
These are from Dec 1960 and Dec 1961 (I’m pretty sure that is right). So I am 2.5 and 3.5 in the pictures, my brother is two years older. Yes, I’m the girl :)
So adorable!
(After adding these, I discovered that she sent these in for 2022, but they are adorable so I am leaving them in anyway.)
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These are from dr. luba.
These are the oldest: 1958, my first Christmas. There’s me propped up under the tree, and one with my dad playing with me. The focus isn’t as good on the second one as my mother did not know how to use the camera…… we were a tinsel loving family, as you can tell.
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My favorite photos were from 1963; my grandparents sent us presents from Wisconsin, and I of course had to pose with them (doll and ball). My brother, in the second, looks like a doll, oddly enough. Note the Ukrainian blouse in the first photo.
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My favorite Xmas ever was 1964, when we drove from Detroit to Neillsville, Wisconsin to be with my grandparents and aunt and uncle on their farm. It was one of the coldest, snowiest winters in Wisconsin history. I remember my grandfather going out and cutting down a tree for us.
On Xmas Eve the adults partied heartily, and forgot to throw some wood in the furnace, so my brother and I woke up to a freezing cold house and had to stay in bed until it warmed up enough to open gifts. Torture.
Then everyone got sick, and the doctor had to come out and make a house call. A huge storm came through and snowed us in. We tried to leave for home, but the car got stuck and my grandfather had to pull it out with the tractor…..
evodevo
Yeah…I remember those cloth coats and zero weather in the Midwest…no picnic. Ski jackets didn’t come into fashion till I was in college in the late Sixties, and were expensive then. I can’t imagine going out without one nowadays. I freeze when I’m INSIDE much less out in the open…
JoyceH
This photos remind me that tinsel was once almost a required ingredient of the well-dressed Christmas tree in those days. You don’t see it much anymore and frankly it looks kind of messy.
Evap
Yes, I sent the Santa pictures in last year, but it’s fun to see them again. My mom had a a bunch of those spanning about 8 years. Christmas was such a magical time for me in those days, my parents went overboard with presents and we had lots of yummy homemade cookies. I’m enjoying everyone’s pictures especially the ones from the same era as me. Our trees were always covered in tinsel!
David_C
@JoyceH: And we reused the tinsel until it was falling apart. I remember Old School tinsel as being more metallic. Another Christmas memory is carefully cutting the tape with a pocket knife so we could reuse the wrapping paper.
It looks like we have a lot of (fellow) Boomers here, raised by parents who experienced the Great Depression, so we were immersed in frugality.
Love these pics and memories.
raven
@evodevo: Or snowmobile boots! My old man was a running fanatic and, in the winter in Chicago, rain in converse high tops and galoshes!
eclare
All of these photos are so cute!
Ten Bears
I remember that weather. I remember I was warmer in bundled up and in snow-boots than my father in his go-to-meeting suit, slick shoes and fedora
sab
I remember being so well padded I could barely move my arms. Then we moved south to Florida.
MagdaInBlack
@evodevo: I remember how awful it was to have to wear a dress in Illinois in winter. They did allow us tights but I am pretty sure my aversion to dresses, esp fluffy frilly ones, comes from the trauma of cold exposure.
Gvg
I remember the every other Christmas in Wisconsin cold. I loved my relatives of course, but hated the cold, always. By the time I was 13 or so, the societal brainwashing that snow was fun had worn off. I did learn to carefully get my parents to buy my winter coat up north, not in Florida, and then I would have a better one. The department store chains would sell ones that looked exactly the same, but were much lighter weight down in Florida. We learned this by accident preparing one year. Dad, the native Floridian who had lived in Wisconsin (and had to use a motorcycle in winter because they were poor) could not find us coats he thought were good enough. Parents arranged for moms sister to pick us up at airport and drive us straight to a mall to shop in Milwaukee. The coat I got lasted me through junior high and is probably the best I ever had.
It was purple. Purple was a very popular color for years. Did not “mean” anything then. But I outgrew it, and it got a bit grubby. You still can’t get heavy coats in Florida, the selection is always less, and the stores don’t sell them for very long. New bathing suits will be in stock soon. I guess those are for tourists and snowbirds because acclimated Floridians, think it’s too cold to even look at them now.
NotMax
Etch-A-Sketch and Mouse Trap?
‘Twas a very good year.
;)
MagdaInBlack
@NotMax: Ooooo, I didn’t see the Mousetrap game, nice catch! I had that game too. An only child, playing Mousetrap with herself. It was fun to build tho 😊
zhena gogolia
I had that doll that Dr. Luba has. She walked! She’s still in the attic with a broken neck (accidental).
Soprano2
I had a red velvet jumper just like the one in that picture. I think I was 2 or 3 when I had it. Those pics bring back memories. My dad’s parents lived on a farm; they would always cut down a cedar tree because it was free. Cedars aren’t good Christmas trees because the branches are flimsy. It would have strings of popcorn and red beads on it. The tree always smelled good.
Albatrossity
@David_C:
For the record, Elizabeth insists on saving the wrapping paper, especially if it is new (lots of reuse of wrapping paper in my family too). We probably have paper that was used to wrap frankincense and myrrh back in the day.
WaterGirl
@Albatrossity: I demand that my calendar arrive gift wrapped in vintage paper! :-)
kidding, of course!
David_C
@Albatrossity: LOL! We still do the careful unwrapping for old times sake, but don’t save the paper. That old foil paper could last five years, although the creases no longer matched the boxes.
Another memory was gettin the tree on the day of the annual Buffalo Bills winter loss to the Dolphins at Miami.
frosty
@David_C:
We weren’t so frugal we had to save wrapping paper … but my dad always saved the stick-on bows, well into the 1980s.
mrmoshpotato
That first picture.
Vicki: Kris, sit down. We need to talk.
dr. luba
@JoyceH: I have lot so of photos of Christmas trees past, and all were loaded with tinsel. And all the old Christmas movies I love (B&W) have loads of tinsel on the tree.
I haven’t put up a real tree since 2018 (bad shoulder and sciatica; the latter has been repaired, but shoulder recently reinjured). When I did, I would put up a huge spruce, with 5-6 thousand little white lights, and a couple of packs of tinsel. The tinsel made the tree shimmer as it moved. Gorgeous…..
dr. luba
@frosty: I still save the stick on bows, no idea why. Seems a waste not to, especially the fancy ones.
wjca
I was really hoping the some of our regulars could contribute photos. So what we see wasn’t quite so lily-white.
WaterGirl
@wjca: That would be nice!
Frank Wilhoit
1958! (Also my first Xmas) That tinsel was made of genuine lead foil. Paging Dr. Drum, paging Dr. Kevin Drum (yet another 1958’er, btw)….
emjayay
@JoyceH: Notice how absolutely straight down it hangs. That’s proper metal tinsel/icicles, not mylar.
emjayay
@Soprano2: Like hamster litter!
John Revolta
Lead tinsel was mandatory! We had cousins that saved theirs from year to year but we used to take it all off the tree and crush it down into a little ball that weighed about a pound and would fit in the palm of your hand. Then you could use it to punch your brother in the shoulder! And then eat lots of Christmas goodies probably with lead residue all over your grubby little hands. Good times!
And yes, we had both Etch-a-Sketch and Mouse Trap. The latter was more fun just playing with the parts than actually playing the game.