Woolworths At Christmastime

A British page: Woolworth's lasted longer there than it did here, but alas, it's gone from Great Britain as well. "Woolies," as the Brits called it, was as popular a store there as it was here. There are still Woolworths stores in Australia.

Christmas Decorations at F.W. Woolworth

Woolworth Christmas Display at the National Christmas Center (sadly, now closed, but supposedly going to open again at another location in 2021).

9 Old-Fashioned Five and Dime Stores Still Existing

I still have a Woolworth's star on our Christmas tree. I always pray it holds out! I remember buying Shiny Brite ornaments, plain and stenciled, there, and also individual figures for the "manger scene" under the tree.

Remembering Woolworth's is a great book about the store.

Christmas in Vermont Revisited

Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot, Frances Frost
The Clarks are a small farm family in late 1940s Vermont in this classic four-book children's series by Frost, a Vermont native. In the opening book, 12-year-old protagonist Toby Clark received the dapple-grey pony Windy Foot as a birthday gift and raced him in the annual county fair pony competition, where he met 12-year-old Tish Burnham, a horse breeder's daughter. At Christmas, the whole family: dad, mom, Toby, 9-year-old Betsy, 5-year-old Johnny, and farmhand Cliff (who's pretty much family) are preparing to welcome Tish and her father Jerry for a visit as well as planning a true farm Christmas with homemade decorations, gifts ordered from the mail order catalog, caroling under the town Christmas tree and shopping at the general store, and Toby taking Tish out riding in the new sleigh he refit for Windy Foot.

Fifty years after I read it for the first time, I still get as much enjoyment out of this story as I did the first time, even if Johnny's little impromptu poems still make me roll my eyes and the girls' brief talk about dolls bore me. It's an annual read, and a portrait of a vanished era: cows milked by hand and barns lit by lanterns, kids going on their own showshoeing to gather Christmas greens or going skiing without adults keeping tabs on their every move, boys renovating things on their own, the family gathered by the fire instead of each around an electronic device. There's even a marauding bear, a skiing accident, and a stolen sleigh to add a little excitement. It's very easy to be taken into the warm home-circle and feel comfortable with these characters.

I have always found it notable that in a book written in 1948, Tish's ambition is to be a surgeon or at the least a medical doctor. Toby finds that this idea of "a girl being a doctor" fills him with "awe," but also thinks that she'd make a good one. There is no attempt by Toby or any other adult to try to dissuade Tish from this goal, a surprising attitude in an era when even "career girls" were eventually expected to quit their jobs in favor of marriage and a family. Also, Betsy is given an unusual Christmas gift and no one says that a girl should not be receiving such a gift.

Frost also has a talent with picturesque descriptions that remind me of Gladys Taber.  This is a nostalgic book well worth seeking out for its approachable characters, family interactions, Christmas-cozy factor, and pacing.

Have Yourself a Silent Little Christmas!

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Happy Sylvester!

In reading Joanna Bogle's A Book of Feasts and Seasons, she mentions being in Germany on New Year's Eve and hearing no mention of that term. Instead, they greeted each other with "Happy Sylvester!"

Sylvester was a Pope, and later became a Saint, and his Saint's day is December 31. Since I had a little budgie named Sylvester many years ago, I like the mention of the name.

James and I have both been a bit under the weather today: I was up during the night and he's had problems today. Nothing contagious, thankfully.

About noon we dragged ourselves out of the house, first to Goodwill to bring a box of donations, and then the library to do the same. The check-out area was filled with delightful old-fashioned decorations like paper chains of reindeer heads (embellished with glitter, the antlers excellently done) and snowflakes, and also red-and-green circle paper chains like you see in vintage photographs. There were also chenille snowflakes and three-dimensional paper ones. It was all very simple but pretty. So that got done (and, oh, yeah, later on I did get the new stickers on the car license plates—legal for 2012).

Then we went to the hobby shop for about an hour. I finished Christmas is Murder, a very lackluster mystery set in a British bread-and-breakfast, the chief sleuth being a Scottish barrister. Very flat characters.

We wished all a Happy New Year, then drove two miles to Eastlake Shopping Center to have a late lunch at the Panera Bread. I filled up on soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, and had an apple left over. They have an area near the front that is like a "snug," with upholstered chairs and a loveseat near a gas fireplace open on both sides, and we sat in front of the fire to eat. It was very warm out, in the low 60s, and I was glad the fire was turned down low!

I realized this morning we didn't have anything for New Year's dinner, so I suggested to James that we go in the nearby Kroger to find some ham. Well, since we were there anyway we did the weekend shopping and also scored: not only the beef vegetable soup James liked so well at the Johnson Ferry Kroger, but a pork roast! We find these only intermittently at the Whitlock Road Kroger and grab them when we can. Ham? Who needs a ham if you can have yummy pork roast? James bought black-eyed peas, of course, and I also got some cucumbers for a salad and some French bread.

I have football on the television this afternoon. I can't say I'm watching it, but I like the sound of football around New Year and on Thanksgiving. It reminds me of long-ago holidays when part of the afternoon's visiting might be tiptoeing upstairs in my Grandpa's house, a place where time had stopped: a fifties stove the newest thing in the kitchen, a scrupulously pressed checkered tablecloth seen year after year, a dining room with stately old furniture from the turn of the last century, and in the living room, which still had its aged, cigarette-smoke stained surface and light sconces that looked like candles, an uncle or two would be sitting watching a football game on an aged television in a wooden console. (Well, they said they were watching, anyway. Usually we would find them, heads tilted back on vintage antimacassars, sound asleep.) Or later the guys gathered around the television at my cousins Eileen and Buddy's house. Warm fuzzy memories making me want to follow the uncles' example. Heck, Schuyler is already asleep!

Rudolph Day, June 2011

"Rudolph Day" is a way of keeping the Christmas spirit alive all year long. You can read a Christmas book, work on a Christmas craft project, listen to Christmas music or watch a Christmas movie.

Another time machine post. Our subject: Vintage Video: Christmas in the 1950s

Newsreel of Christmas 1950 Around the World

1950s Christmas Photos Set to Music

Queen Elizabeth II's 1957 Christmas Message

Color Home Movie Footage of a 1950s Christmas Parade in Quincy, MA

Christmas Photo Nostalgia

Weird yellow streaks in one photo and some purplish cast on any others were caused by the scanner.

* * * * * * * * * * *
Mom and Dad at Papà's house in 1952. Mom was evidently feeding Dad well back then! Check out the suspenders!



My first Christmas, 1955, with Dad holding me in front of the tree. I'm about two weeks old here. Dig the 50s wallpaper, the print curtains, and that big metal radiator behind the table the tree is on. Any windows not over those radiators had frost on them during the winter.



Here I am with my first doll at age 1; it had odd, soft skin. And the beloved "Skotch" cooler, that accompanied us on so many trips to the beach!



Just turned two, here I am with Mom. I see a tea set and a toy telephone. I also got a doll carriage that year.



My grandmother died in 1958, so we had a small tree and did not put it in the window and only lit it on Christmas Eve. There's my tin stove! The stuffed dog was named "Little Lassie." Guess which show I could stay up to watch!



No Christmas tree here, It's 1959 and I am at the right of my cousin Eileen, who is reading the Christmas story, with my cousin Kathy at her left. I think we were acting it out in "the cellar" of Papà's house. Note the neat built-in china cabinet and the beadboard. The cellar also contained a treadle sewing machine, and, off left of the china cabinet, an old icebox.



At age six, I was a bit embarrassed being kissed before the camera by Dad. That was one of two dresses I had with a velveteen top. I loved velveteen. That was my second phonograph; my dad gave my grandpa my old one to play in his garden shed and bought me a new one. Grandpa used to burn out the tubes in the phonograph by leaving it on overnight one too many times.

BTW, I'm pretty sure I still have all those 45s. I just looked and I know I have the Frosty and the Perry Como that's lying on the floor. I think one of the others is the Alvin and the Chipmunks' "Christmas Don't Be Late," which I still have.

I've noticed some folks comment about the "odd looking" Christmas trees back then. That's because back then they just let them grow naturally. Today they "strip" (prune) them multiple times during the growth process so they are full. Sometimes you had to be creative because a tree had a big empty spot on one side; you either turned it toward the wall or put the entire tree in a corner where it wouldn't show.



Here I am in 1962, or perhaps '63; not sure. In the new stroller is Matilda, the doll my Papà brought me back from Italy. Of more interest is the pink poodle (Pepe) and the grey poodle (Fifi), and my children's Bible sitting next to Fifi. After 1961 because the wallpaper is gone. I remember when they steamed all that wallpaper (it was in the bedrooms, too) off the wall. What a mess.



Frisky and I under the tree, 1968. This is the last time you'll see me with hair this short; when I went into junior high Mom said I didn't have to keep it short anymore. Notice the baseboard heat; the radiators were gone by then.



1969. I can tell, because there's my first cassette recorder, "Reese," keeping company with Frisky. And a Breyer horse.



Definitely 1970, because there's my typewriter, a Smith-Corona Galaxie Deluxe manual. Dad wouldn't buy me a typewriter until I learned to type, which would have been Miss Rossi's class in ninth grade at Hugh B. Bain. Look! New carpet!



This is 1972, and horribly blurry—just wanted you to note the maxi-skirt. Had two. Loved 'em.



1977: note the new paint scheme. Mom hated it, but we were tired of "everlasting beige" all over the house (their room was gold and mine was blue). After Dad died Mom had the bedrooms and the living room painted beige again. The other point of interest is on the right, in the white pot. This was the mimosa tree I was trying to raise. I called her "Fluffy" (for the big fluffy pink flowers mimosa trees have).

Oh, check out the Glass Wax stencils on the front window (also in the next photo). I used to do this all by myself. Loved it all except getting on the stepladder to do that top pane...



Corey, the big stuffed collie, under the tree in 1978, a gift I bought for myself after I went to work. You'd be surprised how many people came in the room and jumped when they saw him, or said "I didn't know you had a dog," before noticing he was stuffed.



The last of the set. It's 1979, and I'm very happy in my fuzzy bathrobe with Corey by my side and a John Denver album ("J.D.") on my lap.

A Holiday Treat in NYC

A Subway Trip Back in Time

With a tip of the hat to the Facebook page of "Richard Castle."

Black and White Christmas

Last year I bought something called "Holiday Family Collection" off Amazon...it was less than $10. It's a bunch of old Christmas cartoons, some Christmas movies like The Great Rupert and Beyond Tomorrow, and Christmas episodes of mostly 1950s, but also early 1960s television series. I popped out the volume that had the television shows on it.

The first episode that started was "The Late Christmas Present," the very first Christmas episode of the Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and it came with the original Aunt Jemima Pancake mix commercials. It was a sweet story: on Christmas afternoon Ricky and Ozzie go to the home of another Nelson family to see if the department store delivered Ricky's missing catcher's mitt to them. They find out Mrs. Nelson is a widow with three little children who had a tiny tree and a poor Christmas. So they gather toys and things to help them.

Next I played "Cannonball Christmas," from Petticoat Junction: Scroogy Homer Bedloe tries to shut the Hooterville train down on Christmas Eve, before the annual caroling tour. This was intact except the theme song was replaced due to copyright considerations. But it had the original Filmways logo! Following that, I put on the Paul Winchell Show episode. It was rather slapstick-y, although the second half was a "space cadet" 1950s look at the year 2000, where Paul spends Christmas on the moon. This came with the original Cheer commercials, for "new Blue Cheer," which was advertised as making your clothes so clean they needed no bleaching nor bluing. (Does anyone still know what "bluing" your clothes means?) It also had the old "NBC Television Presentation" logo and black-and-white logo at the end.

The next episode was "The Christmas Present" from the British Scarlet Pimpernel series, with Marius Goring as Sir Percy. And, oh, my ears and whiskers, Patrick Troughton playing one of his best friends! This was from 1955, the year I was born. The Pimpernel rescues four royal children from the clutches of Chauvelin. (Hey, this guy is good...he not only manages to bring four kids to England, but a donkey and a dog, too!)

A Great Christmas Story

Daniel Taylor had this wonderful story linked on his blog. I wanted to link it, too, since it's such a wonderful story!

(This made me nostalgic as well—'cause I've been to that farmer's market. On the 1978 California trip with my parents, we got tickets to see Match Game, which was filmed at CBS Television City, and we ate lunch at the market. I know it was 1978, because they still had a poster up from CBS: On the Air, their 50th anniversary special which had aired earlier that year.)

British Christmas Films

"Santa Claus" from 1898

"Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost" from 1901

"Dreams of Toyland" from 1908

"Making Christmas Crackers" from 1910

"Christmas Under Fire" from 1941

"Christmas 1946" theatre greeting

"Christmas is Coming," a short film in silhouettes from 1951

Lagninappe (not Christmas, but fascinating just the same): "Old London Street Scenes" from 1903

Lots more old British films here.

CHRISTMAS BOOK REVIEW: Wishin' and Hopin'

by Wally Lamb

The subtitle, "A Christmas Story," is a bit of a misnomer, but the last half of the story does take place at Christmas, so...close enough for this humorous memoir about Felix Funicello, whose only "claim to fame" so far in his ten years has been that he's distant cousins with former Mouseketeer/singer/movie star Annette Funicello. But in October of 1964, life changes for Felix: his fifth-grade parochial school teacher, Sister Dymphna, suffers a nervous breakdown and his class gets a lay teacher, a French-Canadian woman with a decidedly Gallic outlook on life (and the curriculum, since they now have French lessons); his mom gets in the Pillsbury Bake-Off semifinals; Felix himself and his pals will be in a future audience of the local Ranger Andy television show; and an outrageous Russian student joins their class. Into this heady mix stir the usual class teacher's pet, Felix's growing awareness of the opposite sex (partially stimulated by his slightly older best friend), and the approaching class Nativity pageant.

It all turns out to be a very funny, very true portrait of a 1960s Italian family in southern Connecticut, a "slice-of-life" story that reaches its hilarious conclusion at the Nativity pageant. If I have any complaint with this book, it's that Lamb almost throws in TOO many 1960s references...hair scrunchies, references to TV and radio personalities, references to the newfangled idea of "subscription television," etc. in an effort to portray the era. But for me it didn't overwhelm the sheer fun of the story--and it even ends with an American Graffiti-like "whatever happened to" epilog which provides the tale with a perfect capper. Enjoyable, especially for nostalgia buffs and those who, like me, remember the early 1960s.