On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Albatrossity is getting us started with our Holidays When We Were Little series. The images in the post are in chronological order, but this one absolutely needs to be featured first. Precocious! I could be wrong, but I don’t think that was Elizabird. I wonder if she knows about this! :-)
Please send in your holiday pics from when you were little. Pics from holiday markets and holiday lights and decorations are also welcome!
~ WaterGirl
I love the idea of posting pics from Christmases past, even if mine date back to somewhere just this side of the last Ice Age. So here are a few to get the ball rolling.
I may have mentioned before that my dad was a professional photographer, so my childhood (and those of my 5 siblings) was well-documented. He produced a Christmas card, with a family portrait, every year to send to friends and relatives. I have a few of these, but not a complete set. Here are some from the early years.
And, like my dad, I have a photographic project or two every Christmas. Click here to see the links for the 2025 bird photo calendars (Hummingbirds, Birds of Flyover Country, and Bird Butts!).
I was born in September of this year, so this is my first appearance on the Christmas card. Click here for larger image.
Remarkably (and you will soon see why I am remarking), the 1951 card did not feature any new kids. Click here for larger image.
My brother John joined the picture that year. Click here for larger image.
My sister Anne looks pretty skeptical about this tradition. Or maybe she already knows about apostrophes… Click here for larger image.
And Mary showed up in 1955. This staircase was in the studio where my dad worked (we never lived in a house with a staircase when I was a kid), and was completely fake, leading to nowhere. I dunno if that is a metaphor or not, but it is a fact. Click here for larger image.
Baud
That baby picture is cute but your mom looks a little young.
Donatellonerd
i think i have Helen’s haircut in one of our family cards from then. you’re 13 months older than me. will look and maybe scan and send. thanks. i love these every year.
eclare
Your sister Mary looks pretty skeptical or scared of this tradition as well!
Betty
Adorable kiddies. What nice remembrances to have.
TS
I loved that we used to create Christmas cards from family pictures – in the days before photography became available to all. I have no idea how my folks afforded it – we had to pay for the photographer as well as the cards. I do remember one year an enterprising salesman set up business near the local playground (today he would probably be chased away) with his Merry Christmas sign and all – and we were photographed on the swings.
How lovely that you have all those cards, I could only find one in the family album – but many of the families of my parents friends.
Jay
Early 60’s kid.
Dad shot first in Kodachrome slides, then in 8mm.
Up to 6 takes of us coming down the stairs to the tree, Xmas morning.
Every year into the mid 70’s.
p.a.
I was an only child, and don’t remember when I figured out Santa wasn’t real. How ’bout you folks? Did an older sibling clue you in early? Were you the older one breaking your youngers’ hearts? ; )
Or did you come from nice families where the fantasy was maintained?
zhena gogolia
I love these.
eclare
@p.a.:
Only child here too, but I found out in kindergarten.
MagdaInBlack
@p.a.: Probably around 5. I was babbling something about Santa, and my mother, apparently in a MOOD, said ” Oh Magda, there is no Santa Claus.”
Horror and tears and I stomped off crying, only to come back a few minutes later asking ” I suppose there’s no Easter Bunny either?”
Only child too
Eta: my mom, not the best with small children.
eclare
@MagdaInBlack:
I think my parents were relieved to stop the charade.
Ramalama
@p.a.: I learned Santa wasn’t real when my Dad got ill and undiagnosed and therefore (almost) no money for Christmas. I felt like a little adult then, aged 6.
p.a.
@eclare:
@MagdaInBlack:
Think I figured it out a bit later, probably when I kept seeing assorted Santas all over the place. Since I don’t remember exactly, I’m guessing it wasn’t very traumatic. My repressed memories are much more interesting than “no Santa”.
Trivia Man
Don’t recall the santa reveal, i think i spent one year asking pointed questions. But the family tradition for kids made it fun after santa was debunked. 5 kids, youngest goes to bed. Next youngest fills their stocking and helps set up gifts for that child. Santa never wrapped, we each had our own chair for gifts. Wrapped stuff under the tree.
Then we each went to bed in order of age and the kids left helped the parents. Was fun to be in on it for the younger ones. Part of the fun was guessing which pile was yours but i think it was always obvious.
eclare
@Trivia Man:
That sounds like a great tradition! I think one reason my parents were relieved once I found out was they had a rough couple of years waiting for me to go to sleep so they could assemble the “Santa gift.”
Albatrossity
@Jay: My dad did the movies as well. My favorite memory as a child, immortalized first in 8 mm film and now digital, was a scene where my brother, blinded by the thermonuclear glare of those lights, came out of a dark bedroom, down a dark hall, and turned the wrong way, missing the front room and presents, and ran smack into the refrigerator in the kitchen. Priceless!
@p.a.: Dunno when I learned that Santa was just a commie hoax, but it had to be before the year that my dad recruited me to assemble bicycles for my sisters, and those bikes appeared under the tree on Christmas morning.
p.a
Parents would leave a trail of presents from my bed to tree. (Small house, 1 floor, no ’60’s version of a McMansion.)
TBone
My SIL “forgot” to provide my baby and childhood photo albums that my mom made and kept for me when she was put in charge of cleaning out mom’s house. My attorney urged me to make the three hour drive there but I knew that if I had to be alone with her in my mother’s home for all that time, only one of us would emerge alive so I told my brother to just mail me a goddamn check ferchrissakes if he couldn’t handle me and HIM doing it as was the legal and moral imperative.
TBone
@TBone: I apologize for that grinchy comment but one of my favorite childhood photos was me sitting in Santa’s lap giving a side-eye stinkeye that still makes me LOL!
WendyBinFL
@p.a.: As the older of two, I believed in Santa until second grade, when a classmate clued me in. I was devastated… but at least I KNEW that the Tooth Fairy was real! (I had seen her, early one morning, a tiny dancer next to my pillow. I still believe in fairies.)
Albatrossity, I was born before you… but only by a year, so I guess I was a bit young to REMEMBER the last Ice Age!
WendyBinFL
@WendyBinFL: Sweet photos and commentary, thanks Albatrossity!
WaterGirl
@MagdaInBlack: I bet the Easter Bunny hurt more than Santa, because once you make that leap, then you question everything!
WaterGirl
Albatrossity, thanks for kicking this off for us, as usual!
Everybody else, please send in your holiday pics! Probably best to use the submission form even for just a photo or two so I have everything in one place. I can always combine OTR posts , if needed.
WaterGirl
Elma just sent in some pics, thank you Elma!
mvr
@p.a.: My mom didn’t believe in lying to kids so we never believed in Santa. We were told not to tell the other kids. Perhaps too since we also celebrated Sinter Klaas, earlier in the month (our parents were immigrants) it was inevitable that we didn’t think Santa was real.
It didn’t actually get in the way of the fun. We just pretended Santa was real. So we made up stories to explain how there could be two Santas at the same time (which there were if you looked around). One version involved Elves dressing up as Santa to please children. I do remember a guy coming to our house when I was around 6 (so probably in 1964) to give us each a present on Christmas eve.
Trivia Man
@mvr: we adopted our sons at age 4,5 so we didn’t have the years of laying out a mythos. I never wanted to li to them, plus i am not a good liar, so the first time he asked me i just admitted it.
Is santa real? Dont lie to me!
Nope. But dont tell the other kids at school.
mvr
@Trivia Man: As I implicated, I don’t even think it spoils the fun. Most kids are good at pretense.
dnfree
@p.a.: I’ll tell you how I found out Santa wasn’t real. I was five years old, and a seven-year-old neighbor girl was upstairs with me helping me write a letter to Santa. I corrected her spelling of “from” and she got pissed and said “Who cares! Santa isn’t real anyway, it’s your mother and father!”
I ran down to the kitchen bawling, and my mom tried to convince me Santa was real, but the thing was—as soon as I heard the neighbor’s words, I knew she was right. It fit the facts.
WaterGirl
@dnfree: My oldest sister – who is 5 years older than me and never could keep a secret when she was young – told me when I was 5. Kind of amazing that she didn’t tell me earlier!
way2blue
One of my favorite Christmas memories (as a parent) is the year I got 3 mice and a cage with a wheel when the kids were 5, 5 &7. And hid it under our bathroom sink. All night heard the little mice running on the wheel. (I’d bought all male mice, except turned out ‘Ralph’ was not a Ralph. And we soon had scads of babies. Which I gave back to the pet store… )