Vintage Christmas Decor Thread

Gold metal tree. Ugly one, and 255 bucks! Sheesh!

Made in China, about two days ago. Three boxes for a dollar.

Tinsel.

Costume jewelry Christmas trees. My mom, my aunt and my grandma all made them and I thought they were the absolute height of eleganza (in my boring suburban area, they kinda were!).

Francine and her festive chamber pot

She made those sublime bugle beads, sequins and pins ornaments, too!

Sequin ornaments (great for kids -- all you need is sequins, straight pins and a styrofoam ball).

I just bought 2 stand up blow mold candy canes for my sister who wants outdoor lighter decorations but is ill & can't string lights. All she has to do is put them down & plug them in.

I went on eBay and saw the exact same ones. Someone is claiming they're Gemmy (they're not) and wants $75 a piece, someone else wants $85+ a piece.

The 2 new ones I bought were less than $40 together. eBay is run by the mob now.

These ladies got it going on. So much decor, so much fashion, so much boozin'!

I was so busy staring at the chamber pot that I missed the ornaments.

r9 several good pics, taken by photographers who knew to include the shoes in the shot.

This one is Sister Roma before she took her vows.

It’s not a vintage Christmas thread until you post one of these ...

... and one of these!

I miss all those aluminum trees.

And Shiny Brite ornaments!

I found new, Chinese, incandescent string lights on the shelves in a local crap store here in Switzerland. Highly banned!! Illegal. Mislabelled. I said nothing and bought 10 packs. It was uncanny because the day before I was shopping online for replacment bulbs and they were impossible to find and what I could find were several bucks A BULB.

I'm brass angel chimes powered by the heat of small candles. The kids will be fascinated by me. Everyone thinks I'm charming and lovely until they realize the sound just keeps going and going and going...

We're beeswax minicandles for Christmas trees. We were found for 1 franc a CARTON at a protestant church tag sale 10 years ago and are now a lifetime supply. Of course we are very dangerous but we smell sublime and are used on trees on the snowy patio.

We're not BEING vintage decor, we are remembering it.

Were unsupervised eight-year-olds really qualified to handle metal frames filled with molten plastic after having inhaled the noxious fumes as they baked?

More!

EVEN MORE!

Ah, the good old days — what’s a little asbestos when you need a little Christmas on your windowsill?

I bought 2 strings if these about 10 years ago.

You can buy the plastic “petals” on eBay. At least, you used to be able to. They come in clear and in colors.

They totally are, r4! I want one!

You could probably find one on ebay for 10 thousand dollahs, seeing as they are made from vintage rare genuine costume jewels.

Oh my God r9 I love you! Those ladies have got it goin’ on! Particularly the grande dame in the hot pink dress and white gloves, holding a glass of sherry in front of her tinsel tree.

So many aluminum trees in R22’s photo collection. I never personally knew a family with an aluminum Christmas tree. My mother said they were for Jewish people. “They buy a silver or a white tree and put blue ornaments on it. Christians don’t have those kinds of trees. We have trees that are natural, or ones that are green that look real. We put lights on our trees. Those metal trees can’t have lights on them. The ones with the color wheel are for black people.”

Can you guess my mother was prejudiced?

I bought a bunch of strings of these atomic crystal starburst lights from the Sixties and Seventies on eBay.

I also bought a box of UFO ornaments from 1949.

Oh, and grabbed another ancient box of ornaments from 1953.

Can one still have a tree flocked? It's fab.

Everyone likes Avon for Christmas! Hawaiian White Ginger everything for me!

Let's not forget the dreaded angel hair. My mom had some when I was a kid that had been passed down to her from her mother, who decorated with it in the '60s and '70s. I remember it smelled old and musty. It's also a frankly bizarre thing to decorate with.

I am my nana's 5 cat's assholes. you will be spending the next month pulling foot long strands of silver tinsel out of me.

sometimes you will forget and see something twinkling at you from the corner of your eye. you turn your head in anticipatory delight but, it's just another cat's asshole sparkling at you.

When I use tinsel, I use the reusable kind.

I bought some the first year they were made & they were very slender and much prettier than today’s thick, corkscrew kind.

Sometimes I use icicles.

Sometimes I don’t use icicles or tincicles

I still have my vintage ceramic Christmas trees from my grandmother. You plug it in and the little lights glow so charmingly.

also from r33- my nana was fresh off the boat from Germany. she liked in addition to the aforementioned tinsel and cats, little candles on the tree some years.

other years she would use these BIG (likely leaded) glass colored bulb strings of lights. if you brushed too close you would wind up with a dime sized burn.

one year she brought out ornaments that somehow chirped like little birds at you. fortunately the uh, cats broke those. yeah it was definitely the cats.

when she got older she made us pull whatever tinsel the cats hadn't eaten, the candles hadn't burned, the bulbs hadn't crinkled from heat and PUT THEM BACK IN THE BOX THEY CAME IN. untangled of course.

the tree was up until at least mid January, sometimes many months later until it was bare nude branches underneath the ornaments and lights. when pressed, my nana would wield her trusty wooden spoon and loudly declare that ' the GOTTDAMMED tree is the only joy in my GOTTDAMMED life'. touche nana, touche.

I barely made it out of childhood alive and (questionably) mentally sound.

I loved those silver aluminum Christmas trees. It was so easy to assemble; a metal pole, and all you needed to to was stick the branches in the holes in it. Easy as pie. And once the ornaments were on it, you turned on a color wheel that turned it red, blue, green and yellow. It was so cool! Are trees like that even made anymore? I've seen old vintage ones that look like shit that have astronomical prices on them, but if I were going to spend money on one I'd want it to be new. If they aren't being made anymore that's a shame. They were pure Christmas!

Merry Christmas from all of us in Billing! It's young Ginny's first office holiday party!

I think it was around 1980 when they came out with the first Christmas lights that had electronic music. They were so annoying it was like a buzzsaw through your brain. You had to unplug them to make them stop that infernal buzzing.

I think they still make “musical” lights but I’m sure they sound better now and you can probably turn the music on & off with a remote.

I'm the 1976 Sears Christmas Wish Book toy section

My favorite vintage Christmas decorations? Hmm.

I'd have to say a white blanket, some duct tape....and oh yes, a ransom note!

My mother used to get a Sears catalogue every year. When my nephew was about 6 years old my mother gave him the Sears Wish book to look at and make his Christmas list. I was about 17 years old at the time and said, “I wish there was a Sears Wish Book when I was a little kid!”

Of course, there was a Sears Wish Book when I was a kid. My mother & father didn’t want me to know about it.

About the same time my mother asked me to wrap Christmas gifts for her nieces and nephews (there were about 15 of them at that time). I said “I wish aunts & uncles gave Christmas presents when we were kids!” I had 9 aunts & uncles and would have gotten a lot of presents.

Of course, my mother told my aunts & uncles not to give me Christmas gifts. “They didn’t have the money!” she said.

I should ask my sister if she ever got gifts from my aunts & uncles or if she ever knew about the Wish Book.

R43 My mother was very weird about that sort of thing, too. She was very much the "if you can't return the favor, don't accept the kindness" kind of person.

^ Oh honey! I’m so sorry, and not just because I’ve had a few cocktails and am feeling sentimental. Holiday hugs and kisses to you.

Cheers, ladies!

This reminded me of a tinsel thread from years ago...

I want the vintage hairstyles to come back with the vintage decor.

I miss the old plastic holiday lawn decorations from the 1960s-80s. I guess they were a wee bit tacky, but they had a lot of charm. They were much better than the gaudy inflatables you see today.

It seems just like yesterday that I was riding around with my family looking at these old Christmas decorations and lights. I miss those wonderful times when Christmas was pure magic.

Nobody drives around and looks at Christmas lights anymore. We used to do it, too.

Now people just drive to the house of someone who either has loads of lights set to music you tune in your car radio or have a yard full of 100 inflatables. Plus towns have tgei4 own light shows nowadays which are pretty underwhelming & they charge a fortune.

I trace the end of neighborhoods full of attractive Christmas lights back to the advent of flashing fairy lights and horrendous chasing lights. I remember a house on a major roadway near my parents house where they put different colors of chasing lights in bushes & threw them up in tree branches and tge liggtsxwere all racing at top speed. Every time I went to visit my parents at Christmas time I nearly had a grand mal seizure when I drove past it.

I swear I remember that you could buy a package of 10 short garlands that you could hook onto branches instead of having to drape one or two big long garlands in your tree.

Choir-boy candles!

Gurley made all sorts of little figural holiday candles, r52.

More Gurley candles...

R50 The lights on houses and trees were nice, but I loved putting out luminaries on Christmas Eve, too.

These wooden birds. I swear we had a full trees worth of these

In the early '60s, before miniature lights became popular, these are what we would string on the Christmas tree. The bulbs got so hot they're burn your fingers, and they would also turn the green needles of the tree brown (we always had real trees) wherever they rested on them.

I suspect they were a fire hazard. We might as well have gone full Victorian and put lighted candles on the branches.

^^With the earlier version of these strings of lights (we had a few left over from the '50s), the bulbs were slightly smaller and slightly less hot, but if one bulb on the string burned out, the whole string would go out, and you'd have to get a replacement bulb and keep trying it in each socket until you found the bad one, at which point the string would light up again. It was tedious.

We were only allowed to turn the lights on our Christmas tree twice a day for 15 minutes each time because my mother was convinced the Christmas tree would catch fire. Even after mini lights came out my mother wouldn’t let us turn the tree on for longer.

Every Saturday my mother went to work & my father went to the bar for 2.5 hours from 5pm to 7:30 pm & I would turn the tree lights on. I’d sit in front of the living room window so I could see any cars coming, If a car slowed down near my house I’d dive under the window & pull the plug on the tree.

We had some felt, hand-stitched ornaments. Really cute and I still like them. Not heavy, either.

Classy

I have a lot of family ”heirlooms”- nothing of any value to anyone but me. I do love the lit ceramic tree, the beautifully carved manger scene set, the original Elf off a Whitman’s Sampler from the 60s, and my grandmothers old Christmas village. They’re all very old and add a sweet charm to our Christmas decor.

R49 I think they are less tacky than the newer blowup decorations. For one thing, with the blow up decorations your lawn looks like the aftermath of a music festival or protest when they are not turned on.

Those bulbs really came alive with reflectors, r57.

We had one of those cardboard fireplaces at R61 and would set it up every year. What really made it classy was the electric bulb with a metal disc on top. The heat of the bulb would make the disc twirl to simulate the appearance of flickering flames inside the fireplace.

It was one of my favorite holiday decorations as a child.

R54 - my parents still have and display many of the candles in that image. They bought them for their first Christmas together in 1960.

R65 I must admit that I loved that tacky cardboard fireplace as a child too! Living in California, we didn't have a real fireplace, and I loved when it was brought out every December. I was also easily impressed, and it was ALSO one of my favorite childhood decorations! Yay for us , to be able to enjoy the small, happy things of life!

R67, We lived in New England, but in a then-modern ranch house that had no fireplace. So the cardboard version solved the problem of where we could hang our stockings. It was decorative as well as functional!

The only indoor decoration besides a tree that was allowed in my house was a crèche, so I was thrilled to see people had things in their houses like choirboy candles, mini villages, Christmas trains, cardboard fireplaces, mistletoe, wreathes.

It was hard for me to put together the whole snowy forest, snowmen, mittens, bright multicolored C9 lights, European style churches, Dickensian-dressed carolers thing with —— camels, donkeys, middle eastern kings in robes and a baby in a chicken coop. “Mommy will the baby lay eggs in his nest?”

Smack.

“Mommy why does the baby have half a cheese wheel around his head?”

“That’s a halo. The baby Jesus is holy.”

“ I don’t see any holes. Why are those people wearing sandals? Isn’t it winter time? Are they feeding the animals? Is it a petting zoo? Are there any goats? Why does the baby have his arms stretched out like a grownup.”

“He’s welcoming the 3 wise men.”

“Wasn’t he just born? Shouldn’t his parents have answered the door? Is baby Jesus magic, like Casper? Are Aunt Jeannie’s babies stupid? They don’t welcome people. They poop in their diapers. Did baby Jesus poop his diapers?”

“Baby Jesus did not poop. He is god.”

“So he *is* magic! I knew it! He grows up to be Santa Claus.”

The chirping bird ornament. My grandparents had one of these on their tree - talk about driving someone insane...

I always heard about people stringing together popcorn to make a garland for the tree, but I never knew anyone who actually did it.

R72 that was easy and cheap - but took time! We did it with cranberries and popcorn. New England thing maybe.

I think people had “parties” where they made cranberry & popcorn garlands. There was much merriment with fermented punch, baked cookies and word games.

So am I the only one here who made a Christmas tree by folding in all the pages of a Reader's Digest?

[R72] I did that once and I kept pricking my finger with the needle. It looked great, several hours later, though.

I'll bet some of those women in R9 were real pistols in the sack.

Using Glass Wax to apply Christmas stencils to windows and mirrors was popular in the '50s and '60s. Glass Wax even sold the stencils. I remember doing it once when I was very young and getting slightly light-headed from the petroleum fumes the Glass Wax gave off before it dried. But I was always willing to suffer for my art.

My father put spray can snow on the inside windows of our house & my mother wanted to murdelize him. Took her weeks to get it off.

Does anyone know where I can get icicle lights that are the same length? I know they exist because I’ve seen them. Are they lights sold in drugstores? I hate the messy-looking icicle lights with different drop lengths.

One of my dream jobs as a kid was to be the person who paints windows for all the shops.

My mom had a Gumdrop Tree that was decorated with red, green, and white gumdrops. At the base of the tree were four small trays that were filled with Hershey Kisses and Reese's peanut butter cups. Were weren't allowed to eat the gumdrops until the day after Christmas. That tree has to be at least seventy years old, but still functional. It's a fun memory of my Mom, and we continue to put it up year after year.

I remember them well, r78. I think they need to resurrect that product!

My grandmother had a gumdrop tree, too, and we loved putting the gumdrops on it every year! I’d forgotten about it until just now. Thanks for bringing back happy memories, r91!

We had one too.

Did anyone ever hang one of these?

yes r85, my nana (mentioned several times in thread) had the original casting ones. I am not entirely sure the story but in Germany, the company made the glass ornaments and then during the war, buried the molds. the ones prior to the war were considered a big deal. nana had many of them. my cunt mother probably sold them for drugs after nana died like she did all the other things that I would have absolutely cherished and had wonderful memories about (but, not enough memories, there's never enough)

Sparkleballs! 50 Solo cups, a string of lights, and et voila!

try again.

[quote] I remember doing it once when I was very young and getting slightly light-headed from the petroleum fumes the Glass Wax gave off before it dried. But I was always willing to suffer for my art.

And now you're a popper whore. Nice going.

My late partner and I always had that same pickle ornament on our tree every year, R85. We consolidated our ornaments after moving in together, and I had no idea where he had gotten it or what its origin was.

whoever finds the pickle on Christmas eve gets to open their gift first.

Here it is...

This lady is SEVERE. She looks like the kind of '60s drag entertaintress known for doing overwrought lip-syncing to Shirley Bassey.

I loved those stencils, r78. I dyed the Glass Wax different colors with McCormick food coloring.

My mother and I worked on this Christmas castle from the December issue of McCall's in 1958.

R92 shows a very chic scene. All the decoration is impeccable, as is she. Her 2 grandkids photos under the tree are off-putting, however, thowing a cold, lifeless cast over the atmosphere.

Seems wrong that there are more blue balls than pink ones.

[quote]My mother and I worked on this Christmas castle from the December issue of McCall's in 1958.

So, she knew...

r98 Yet she made such a stink when I confirmed it for her when I was 25.

[quote]I loved those stencils, R78. I dyed the Glass Wax different colors with McCormick food coloring.

That idea never even occurred to me, R94.

R95 what are the marshmallows attached to to create the structure? Are the steeples made of ice cream cones?

The marshmallows were glued to an old suit box from Tepper's (central New Jersey department store). And yes, ice cream cones.

R17. You made me check a long forgotten storage place: And I've still gotten mine!. I need just buying some chandlers for them on Monday, so I can reuse it.

At my parents home, we had couple of this until they all died one after another by burning... We had them in all sizes. Before the falling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 that was the only gift of value our east german part of the family could send us.

I'm not sure how mixing food coloring with Glass Wax would work. Glass Wax was the color of Pepto-Bismol when it came out of the can, but would turn white after drying on windows or mirrors.

This pricey one is fabulous!

It was very pastel-y, r104, but you could tell your pink from your green.

rescue-chick @ R86: My favorite aunt gave me the one she had, my uncle brought it back from France after the war (WW2). I'm sorry to hear about your mother; I have a sister that sold my mom's things-BEFORE she died. Just put those things aside and enjoy the memories we have. Merry Christmas to you, Love.

[quote]My mother and I worked on this Christmas castle from the December issue of McCall's in 1958.

Undoubtedly the gayest thing you will read today.

[quote] My mother and I worked on this Christmas castle from the December issue of McCall's in 1958.

That gets a

MARY!

r105. My father loved this stuff very much and one christmas in the early 70's he bought one, for may be 200,00 D-Marks, which was a lot of money at this time.

We also had a more than a dozen of those guys including more houses and trees. Also the prices nowadays make me speechless...

thanks r107.

I remember the 🥒Christmas Pickle, too. It was hidden inside the 🌲 Christmas Tree, and whoever found it received an extra Christmas 🎁 Present.

We had a tabletop decoration, made of gold metal with a round base that held for candles. Suspended above the candles were four angels with trumpets, and four bells. When the candles were lit, the angels spun around in a circle, ringing the bells with their trumpets.

I don't remember what it was called, but it was one of my Mom's favorite decorations. It was pretty cool.

For R113. Merry Christmas.

That's it, r114. Thank You !

We need to bring back the vintage cheese ball for Christmas Eve. I'm so tired of modern cheeseboards, which are more expensive and less satisfying. Just give me a good cheese ball and some crackers and I'm good to go.

I can't be trusted to eat a cheeseball responsibly

How about these things? I secretly love them.

We all know what you did with that beef stick, R118.

I like the cheese in them (cheese is my drug of choice) but, i don't like the sausage or beef sticks.

I hated Hickory Farms.

I thought it was gross and I always knew it was a regift if I got it.

Fröhliche Weihnachten!

^ ^ ^ those are NOT my nana's!

Hitler hosted Xmas parties. The one in the center smells the Kaiser-Plätzchen.

y'all bitches know you had a set

R124, but they like to pretend the overwhelming majority of Nazis weren't practicing Christians

The OP is spamming his crappy Etsy shit.

My aunt had this big funky two-piece squirrel dish that she filled every Christmas with assorted nuts still in their shells, but there was never a nutcracker to crack them open and eat them. There was a Correlle bowl filled with tangerines that no one ever ate. And last, but not least, that obligatory box of five pound box of Zachary Chocolates that no home should be without.

R126 The Nazi leadership weren't Christian, they were adept at trying to use the veneer of the religion to mask their positions. They promoted "Positive Christianity" which is anything but positive. Among the aspects of their "Christianity" was 1) Rejected the Jewish-written parts of the Bible (including the entire Old Testament), 2) Claimed "Aryanhood" and non-Jewishness for Christ, 3)Promoted the political objective of national unity, to overcome confessional differences, to eliminate Catholicism, and to unite Protestantism into a single unitary positive Christian church, 4) encouraged followers to support the creation of an Aryan Homeland. Therefore, it was viewed as apostate and heresy to every other Christian church, Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant. Nazi "Christianity" is to actual Christianity as the Nation of Islam is to actual Islam.

I remember my mother stuffing our stockings with walnuts. Why??? She also put candy in them, but what was up with the walnuts? It's not like we were poor. What kid wants to sit around cracking walnuts on Christmas morning?

Let’s talk about color wheels & aluminum trees not Nazis & Hitler.

r130 We got walnuts, too. And oranges. I think they're traditional.

R129, those who followed the orders of the "leadership" were religious Christians and the only people desperate to deny the connection happily go after other groups who aren't white and Christian and blame every single member if ONE so much as jaywalks somewhere on earth.

[quote]Undoubtedly the gayest thing you will read today.

On one of the gayest active threads currently on DL.

Hi!

I haven't seen these around in decades.

r132. The walnuts are traditionell. In former times all nuts were food you collect for the wintertime, when people had to live from what was growing during summer and could be stored. Nuts are easy to storage and esy in transporting, they do not need cooling or heating when during transport.

The apple is the same. You've earned them and keep them in your dark cold, froze free basement. This was the vitamins depot.

The oranges were added, when they started to be available after WW II and being imported in Northern Europe (the part north the Alpes).

Oranges, clementines and mandarines were the classical winter fruits in Germany before globalization started. You can ship them a couple of days without rotting.

R133 I don't want to hijack this thread but it is not cut and dry. Here is a good overview of the issue. Also, look at the Confessing Church movement and the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt. The German "Christians" who supported and aided the Nazis were not let off the hook by the rest of Christendom.

"Does Christmas smell like oranges to you?"

We had that tree, R131. Ours had only pinks balls on it. No wonder I'm gay.

Gently lifting the ball....

As a kid, I was obsessed with beautifully wrapped Christmas presents. My aunt was mega-rich and she would have all of our gifts professionally wrapped at Neiman-Marcus every year. I would sit and marvel at those little jewel boxes for hours on end. The elegant wrapping paper, satin bows, glittery pine cones, and each one would have a decorative ornament attached. I had never seen such glamour. I would run my hand along the shiny paper and imagine the treasures contained inside.

There is nothing in the world as elegant and special as a beautifully wrapped gift.

Sounds like you have a really nice fire hazard going there, R29.

So pretty....

R142 I miss gift wrapping at department stores, even the mid-market level ones were nice.

I'm an actual vintage Christmas tree. I'm decorated with my "adopted" grandmother's collection of real wooden ornaments handed down and added to over the years starting in the 1600's. My favorite one is the miniature wooded rocking horse.

An ancient but still in very good condition train set runs on tracks underneath the tree. The home is all white except for a black baby ground piano and the brown wooden rocking chair I've always loved to sit on while admiring the tree always decorated with great care.

R43, I remember looking at the Sears Christmas Wish Book and all of the toys I couldn't have in it. My mother ordered socks and underwear and that was it. Shoes had to be chosen in person to make sure they fit.

Remember adoring the miniature kitchen where the little girl seemed to be having so much fun. My 4 older sisters all laughed at me desiring my own kitchen. After all where would we ever put it anyway? I could always use our own kitchen as I started making oatmeal cookies at age 4. Loved playing with the sifted flour.

Yes I have a pickle. It came in a set of ornaments I bought from the Smith & Hawken catalog years ago. There were two pickles (one broke), two tomatoes and two little corn ears. I also bought a set with a peach (long broken), a pear, a plum and a banana from the same catalog.

Mom and Dad, could this be...your little girl?

R130 it was probably something from her girlhood. My mother put fruits and nuts in our stockings, circa 1960s. There were modern gifts in there, too.

I can imagine very far back in old worldy times, a stocking filled with nuts and fruits was quite the luxury.

I worked at Marshalls, circa 1980, my jr and sr year of HS and my manager let me spend my time decorating - she let me paint the huge plate glass windows, for example. Obviously we didn't pay copyright for the characters I painted on. Now something so artisanal would be impossible.

This thread is being sponsored by Glass Wax.....

Its staggering the amount of toxic fumes I endured growing up in the 60s and 70s. I mean we used to run down the street behind the toxic mosquito fogger in suburbia. Glass Wax was petroleum heaven. Half the craft gifts we got edited toxic fumes. Of course all those poisons smelled fabulous!

In NZ in the 80s, before the internet and before a deluge of Chinese crap came flooding in, tinsel was unknown. But I had seen it in England and wanted some. So I cut thin slivers of aluminium foil on a cutting board, and thought they looked like the real thing....from outer space maybe. Soon little bits of my ersatz tinsel would be dangling from my cat's behind. Ah, memories!

[quote]There is nothing in the world as elegant and special as a beautifully wrapped gift.

"Oh, Mary, it takes a fairy to make something pretty."

Say, that was George Fenneman doing the Glass Wax commercial at R152.

Why do cats love to eat tinsel? One time experience, never again.

Here’s a vintage nugget. The Laverne & Shirley Christmas episode with original commercials. Enjoy.

Oops, try this.

It's weird that the Nazis rejected the Old Testament considering their followers in the Evangelical movement basically reject everything from the New Testament in favor of the old.

Every town had a diner and every year the diner windows would be painted with Christmas scenes. Santa, wrapped presents, holly, etc. I wondered what the people who painted diner windows at Christmas time did the rest of the year.

I just reminded myself that my town used to have a contest every year for the high school seniors. The ones who came up with the best Halloween scenes were allowed to paint & sign the store windows. I loved those Halloween windows and couldn’t wait to be in high school so I could enter the contest. But my mother made me go to catholic high school 40 miles away. Bitch.

[quote] I miss gift wrapping at department stores, even the mid-market level ones were nice

I agree, but I also have a bad connotation re: wrapping.

I worked at Barnes & Noble for years and those cheap whores made us all wrap gifts with no prior training.....people would complain that they didn't get artisinal level wrapping with the 30 seconds I had to spend on wrapping their gift before returning to the 22 other people in line. Le sigh.

Did anyone else make candy wreaths? The first time, the teacher told us in advance and I was very excited about it. The day finally arrived and I learned that we'd have to tie the candy on with skinny ribbon and curl the tails. I had a thing about cuts and potential scars, and even though we were using children's dull scissors there was no way that I was going to curl that ribbon.

I was too embarrassed to tell the teacher that I was afraid of cutting myself, but I wasn't too embarrassed to argue the superiority of a more streamlined wreath without tacky ribbon curls. She wasn't having it, so I killed time by painstakingly measuring my ribbon, cutting it all, and lining up the pieces on my desk.

She caught me glaring at her a few times and called me to her desk, so I told her I had a headache and flounced off to the nurse's office. When I came back to get my coat, she pulled me aside and asked if I was going home because I didn't want to follow her instructions regarding the curly ribbon. I just smiled and tried to look spooky.

"Get a blog," I know. And I agree, but that day was a win for gaylings who took care of their hands.

Were these garish foil ceiling decorations an Irish thing or did any of you guys have them? Our house had a dozen of these hanging from each ceiling in the 80s/90s. Nothing says Christmas to me like the sight of those and the first few chords of “Fairytale of New York”

Great thread: more!

Not for me, r109. MARY was my mother's name.

R95

[quote]de trop?

r124 de too soon

I think I love you, R163

R163 is our kind. Pull up a chair, honey.

Really, r169? A real MARY could curl ribbon with her eyes closed.

R152---WHET Pamela Ferdin?

I'm with r170.

I assume people finally caught on to how annoying she was and her career fizzled, r171.

R171 Pamelyn has a very active Facebook page where she shares memories of acting. It’s fun to read. She is very blunt and to the point with her responses to people’s questions. She has a memoir coming out.

I LOVED curling that ribbon.

I was really good at curling ribbon too. I learned in second grade and often had to help others curl their ribbon.

I tried to teach my third graders this but most couldn’t catch on. They just don’t have the hand eye coordination and dexterity anymore.

Is curling a ribbon the new dialing the phone with a pencil?

Pickle Surprise!

I wish I could post pictures of my house on here, because it takes weeks to get it to a mid century pink frothy state of icicles and baby Jesus. I’m so exhausted by the inside, I haven’t put up anything outside but a lone wreath from Trader Joe’s.

Pamelyn Ferdin retired from acting (not by choice, I'm guessing) and became an animal rights activist. There was always something annoying about her. Perhaps that's why she was chosen to provide the voice of Lucy in a few "Peanuts" specials.

R142 - those NM gift wraps were amazing. The only presents I ever wanted to open, and if they weren't under the tree, I knew it was a lousy Christmas. The NM Christmas catalogue was the best. Not like it is now, but truly dreamy and fun.

My mom was an artist for Hallmark in the late 40's. I'm pretty sure this is one of her cards.

I bought these one year. They were AWFUL

The 1940s style of the illustration is charming, R182.

R182---That is so sweet. My mom saved a lot of my early 60s greeting cards and had her own childhood (40s/50s) cards and Valentines in scrap books, and I used to love looking through them every so often as a kid. I like seeing vintage cards and Valentines with silly puns (two kids at the ice cream parlour, two straws in one drink, captioned, "I SODA Like YOU, Valentine!") Chubby cheeked children and animals wearing clothes...

Vintage is best....

Festive....

*

Snow babies!

Vintage Santa.

I used to love going through the Sear's Wish Book as a kid, I'd circle all the toys I wanted even though I knew I'd probably never get them.

*

It was always the most exciting time of the year, as Reichgiving ushered in the holidays, and then Christmas . . . we always received the very best and most appropriate gifts!

Is the girl on the Sears catalogue cover at R192 supposed to be the kid's mother or big sister? The hair and makeup make her look rather mature.

Big sister, r194. Blame the photo tinter.

As a single man who doesn’t have any nieces, nephews or godkids I am less interested in Christmas with each passing year. This year I don’t even have any decorations up, can’t bothered with the hassle of taking them down again. BUT this thread is a lovely thread that is putting a smile on my face and making me remember some lovely memories of Christmases with my grandparents and the traditions we had. Thank you all and keep posting please.

Put that tree up, r196 !

Buy some egg nog, spike it, then sit back an enjoy the lights.

Ouch! Shunned by a bunch of scabrous vulgarians for wanting to keep my hands soft, smooth, and unblemished. It's okay, I never really loved you anyway. Really, I didn't.

Here's one thing I wasn't afraid to do: I had no problem melting wax to stamp the Christmas cards going to people I liked. Then my mother found out and had a fit because the Hallmark store had sold something requiring fire to an unaccompanied third-grader. It pre-Karen though, so she didn't sue and organize boycotts.

I don't have a tree this year. I have nowhere to store one and when even a 3 foot tree is 80 dollars, it's just beyond me, sadly.

I couldn't stand those silk thread ornaments that were popular in the 1970s. I thought they were tacky.

I miss the old Santa blow molds that people would put on their front door instead of a wreath.

Our stockings were filled with an orange, a generous handful of nuts that I couldn't identify, an one a Bob's Jumbo Peppermint Stick that inspired impure thoughts for good Catholic boys and girls.

Big sister, R194.

We had that identical Santa head on our front door for several Christmases back in the '60s, R201, until my mother decided she would prefer a wreath.

Lots of memories in this thread, in some cases of things I hadn't thought about in years.

I've always been obsessed with the big classic tree featured in Christmas in Connecticut. I think it's so classic, elegant and timeless.

I think tinsel needs to make a comeback.

[quote]I think tinsel needs to make a comeback.

Christmas trees in old movies always remind me of the ones we had when I was a child for two reasons: They're always irregularly shaped, as though they were cut down in the backyard (modern "real" trees are a crop and are pruned to look symmetrical), and they're always dripping with tinsel.

We used to each get a candy cane in our stocking but it was the chalky kind. You couldn’t lick it, you can only suck it because it would rip your tongue to shreds.

[quote]I mean we used to run down the street behind the toxic mosquito fogger in suburbia.

Rode my bike though ours across the street risking being hit by a car.

Ah, childhood.

We used to ride our bikes behind the mosquito fogger truck, too. We were all so oblivious to the dangers of chemicals back then. Hell, our schools were full of beautiful abestos.

At least we were outside playing all the time. That probably counteracted most of the negative stuff.

The old-fashioned lead tinsel has always been perfect for Christmas trees. It has such a beautiful look to it. I found some years ago and have reused it for many years. It’s what we put on the trees when I was a kid — before they replaced it with the awful plastic silver strips. The real tinsel is now selling on the secondary market for $25 - $50 a package. Jeez.

In Europe, at least in Italy where I am now, vintage Christmas ornaments are being sold at all the collectors fairs, flea markets and Christmas markets, at quite high prices, €5-10 each. Is that the same in the US?

I realize Christmas cards aren’t ‘decor,’ but they become so when you string them up over the doorways as our family used to do with the ones we received.

One of my favourites was this reproduction of a 1920 card featuring skiing dachshunds.

My mother was a very prolific sender of Christmas cards back in the 1960s. She had beautiful penmanship and started writing cards right around Thanksgiving. She sent them out in early- to mid-December. Consequently, we received a LOT of cards. They became part of our holiday decorations, and we strung them from red and green Christmas ribbon in the family room in the basement. My favorites were the reproductions from the 1800s.

Don't forget about Christmas card crafts. You can find all sorts of ideas for turning your old Christmas cards into useless junk!

About 15 years ago, I was living in Baltimore and. I got weirdly nostalgic for a 1950s Christmas I never knew, having been born in 1966 in Houston. So, I bought those bubble tree lights and a bunch of atomic age decorations. I still have them so my tree is a funny blend of personal decorations, a Barry Levinson movie and Forbidden Planet.

[R215] It is easy to believe it’s seventy years ago in Baltimore. It’s the biggest time warp in the US, as far as I can tell!

Bubble lights are the absolute best, r215.

We had most of the things mentioned in this thread, as well as bells exactly like the one at the end of "It's A Wonderful Life." They were old, and could well have been from the 1940s, for all I know.

The people who lived next door to us when I was growing up in the 1960s had a tabletop Christmas tree that had the bubble lights plugged directly into the tree branches. I loved visiting and seeing those bubble lights working. At that point bubble lights had been discontinued, I believe, and those were the only ones around.

I loved putting up the strings of outdoor lights in the bushes out front. We had the old style C9 frosted bulbs in various colors. Each light would illuminate the leaves around it in one color and create a tiny secret dinosaur world that I would dream myself into.

I remember having a bunch of these ornaments on our tree in the '60s.

Those big outdoor light looked so lovely covered in snow.

My father always put C9s in the bushes out front. He trimmed them to have flat tops, so when it snowed the lights were completely covered and looked so great glowing under the mantle of snow.

C9 bulbs were multicolored, but ALWAYS had white bulbs along with the colored bulbs. When small lights came out, they never put white bulbs in along with the colored bulbs. This always made multicolored fairy lights look dark.

It’s a shame most people didn’t have cameras that could photograph outside at night so there are no pictures of outdoor snow covered Christmas lights back then.

Icicle lights. I recall when these started coming out in the 80's, but I never see them any more on people's trees. I suppose they are rather tacky looking.

R224 my neighbor was still using c9s in the 80s and 90s on his huge spruces. He had special circuit breakers installed in the 60s - heavy load. A few thousand lights. Cost a fortune. I took plenty of pictures with my trusty canon when I was in art school in the 80s. Color and black and white. With snow. Unfortunately this is all in storage in the USA. I'm sure there are plenty of color photos out there, of vintage c9s. 400 and 800 film.

I remember these from back in the day; we were coached to hang them directly above one of the huge and hot bulbs on the tree.

We had several antique fruit ornaments that had belonged to my father's grandparents. My father insisted on putting them on the tree each year, but my mother disliked them and so would always hide them in the back.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

^^That tree looks like something out of "Day of the Triffids."

R229, that tree is a horror.

I always wanted one of those silver trees from the 50s because they always looked so clean and modern in old photos.

I remember getting in trouble one year in elementary school because we were supposed to draw our Christmas tree, and I didn’t color mine green like all the other children. I explained we had a flocked tree. But, the teacher didn’t care and said Christmas trees are green. She sent the picture home to my mother with a note, my mother sent it back with a Polaroid of our tree. The teacher never apologized but did change my grade.

R233 I hope to hell it was a pink flocked tree!

R234 no a simple white one, that is what made the teacher upset, she said I didn’t do as much work as the other kids, because I only did the outline, ornaments and lights, and left the rest white.

Flocked trees looked like cancer clusters waiting to happen.

That tree looks like the Monty Python blancmange that was turning everyone into Scotsmen

Those bubble lights are on sale at Safeway in a retro package for 30% off $24.99. I kind of want to buy some, but I hardly ever get a tree to accommodate strings of lights. I have two small tabletop tinsel trees with attached lights I just plugged in yesterday. Does anyone think the bubble lights can be hung along a mantel using nails or those easy pull off plastic hooks? Or do they need to sort of rest on the tree branches and need that support?

They need to be somewhat upright so that the fluid contacts the heat source, r238.

R238 I've put them on top of the mantle with pine garland before and they looked wonderful.

My great-aunt made beaded Christmas ornaments. She saved remnants of fancy fabrics from sewing to cover Styrofoam balls. She would then decorate those with beads from thrift-store jewelry. They were beautiful, one-of-a-kind ornaments that she would give as Christmas presents.

Funny you should mention tinsel. My father was positively anal about hanging one strand at a time.

Anal? Is your father a cat?

We get it. Tinsel from cat butt. We got it the first time. And the second....and the eighth time.....

[quote] I've put them on top of the mantle with pine garland before and they looked wonderful.

No they didn’t.

Time to put all this crap away, friends. The magic is gone.

When I was growing up we didn’t take the Christmas stuff down until the Epiphany on January 6. But we also didn’t put up the tree until a few days before Christmas, and we only began decorating the house on December 8. All together, less than a month.

I do remember visiting NYC on December 26 and seeing trees already discarded in front of houses ready for the trash pickup.

A Christmas tree already tossed onto the sidewalk for pickup on Dec. 26 was always one of the saddest sights of my childhood. From magic to humdrum sameness in the space of 24 hours.

R247 it seems people have forgotten that the 12 days of Christmas starts Christmas day. I've always wondered why the Christmas celebration ceases on December 26. I think it's fine to leave your decorations up until then, but a lot of people throw their trees out the day after. Hell, when I was a kid, our neighbors burned their Christmas tree on Christmas Day!

We alway took our decorations down on Jan. 1. I would watch the Rose Parade on TV and then my mom and I would take down the tree and other decorations. I still get that same pit in my stomach knowing that the fun times were over and it was back to school the next day.

The people who lived across the street from us tossed their tree out on Christmas morning, literally. We’d still be opening our gifts, when we’d see their front door open, the tree come flying out, and the door close.

^^What awful people they must have been.

Top this: When I was a kid, my parents were friends with another couple, Petey and Sue. They had a couple kids I'd babysit while my parents and P & S would go out together. I have renamed the man Petey because he was a notorious Neaty Petey. When he was a child, he asked for and got his own vacuum cleaner for Christmas.

As the father of two young children under seven years, here is the Christmas schedule Neaty Petey demanded and enforced: 1) open gifts 2) put gifts away in appropriate locations 3) take ornaments off tree 4) put away ornaments and decorations 5) dispose of tree 6) vacuum thoroughly 7) continue rest of day....?

When I was a kid we would try and leave the tree up until Jan 6th, but since it was real it would often get too dry and my mom would take it down sooner. I always hated coming home from school one afternoon to find the tree gone - the living room looked so empty. My dad talked about how when he was a kid in Queens in the 40's they would gather up all the trees on the curb and have a bonfire in the middle of the street. For a few years he would set our discarded tree on fire as we watched from the stoop - it would go up in an instant and he'd hose it down after only about a minute or two.

I never take down decorations until at least Epiphany on January 6. But, even then I only take down outside decorations and the tree if it is a live one. I leave the rest up until Candlemas, on Feb 2.

My mom, born in 1928, always said, casually, it was bad luck to take down the tree before Jan 1. I guess that idea just stuck with me. And to see these beautiful trees just dumped out by the side of the road makes me feel a bit sad. Christmas is always a mix of happy and sad anyway.

I also dislike how suddenly Christmas ends, after weeks of preparation. There should be less buildup and stress beforehand, and the holiday period should be a week long, Dec. 25 through Jan. 1, with everyone off from work and with plenty of time to visit family, friends, neighbors and other loved ones.

My Dad put the tree up on Christmas Eve, so we could keep it up till Jan 6 or so. Live trees don't last. I decorate and put up an artificial tree mid December and take it down sometime after Jan 15. One year it stayed up till February because I got sick in January. That may seem too long for some, but everything looks so great I am loath to give it up.

R258 Do people not understand you have to keep them watered and have a fresh cut done before placing it in the stand? We have had live trees that lasted at least a month, one that lasted longer since we had it up from Thanksgiving weekend until at least a week after New Years. It might also help, that we do not run the heat excessively.

R259 Yes, I know about watering trees. My Dad was a notorious cheapskate. I had to go out with him on Christmas Eve to get our tree, if you waited till the early evening the left overs were cheaper. Of course, they were scraggly and half dead. One year he bought two trees and tied them together to make one tree. There are some old pics of some of the trees, really awful. Still, they were happy times. We had great Christmases.

As a kid I was the one who made sure that the "blinker bulbs" were as evenly spaced as was practical, either along the line of lights on the roof of the house or around the Christmas tree. It would be tacky if too many blinkers were close together. So one blinker every 10 or so steady bulbs. Also I would study the tree and unscrew and rearrange bulbs so that light colors would be more or less evenly distributed throughout the tree. In those days you could unscrew individual C7 bulbs. But only when the string was unplugged, for safety. The horrors of having 3 green bulbs near each other, when a red, blue or yellow one was more appropriate!

tis a gift to be simple......especially if you're poor, and construction paper was cheap

My mother took everything down on New Year’s Eve. She said it was bad luck to have your tree up into the new year. Things were terrible at home. Alcoholic father ruined Christmas every year. Maybe Mother had it wrong. She was an idiot. One year she sprayed flocking on the tree AFTER it was decorated. What an idiot.

snowglobes

I was always glad people tossed real trees on 12/26 in NYC. The thought of someone in an apartment a few flights down on January 1st turning on the lights of the Christmas tree they dragged home on November 27 always frightened me.

One day my husband and I were walking outdoors on the grounds of our building complex and saw a lot of glass right in front of us. We looked up and saw a glassless window 3 flights up. We asked one of our security guys what happened & he said a Christmas tree fire. There were 4 buildings. Three were middle class & one was subsidized lower income. In the lower income building a woman lived with her 5 kids in a one bedroom. They had a real tree. There were 2 entries in our kitchens, for safety reasons, but the woman had blocked one off to put beds in the hallway. So they were throwing the Christmas tree away and had to walk through the kitchen. Someone was cooking and the gas cooktop was on. The tree went up in flames. The refrigerator door was full of paper — kids drawings the mother & kids had stuck on the door. The papers caught fire. It was an instant conflagration. The mother and one son died. What a mess. FDNY had broken the window to put out the fire.

My dad was parsimonious too R260. One Christmas he came home with two scraggly trees, then drilled holes in the trunk of one and inserted branches cut from the other to make one full tree. It was hilarious.

I remember a short film(On Sesame Street maybe)when I was a kid about a Christmas tree that gets cut down and taken home where it's decorated and adored then it gets thrown out onto the street when it's sad and dry and then a little girl finds a pinecone on the tree and plants it(the entire pinecone) and a new little tree emerges, I remember it being really sad and depressing.

R267, that sounds very similar to a short story that was included in a compilation of Christmas stories that I was given as a kid. It was sad.

Included in that book was the delightful “Christmas Every Day,” by William Dean Howells — a cautionary tale of being careful what you wish for.

R266 LOL

Dad was cheap, but I miss the old man. Bet we could compare lots of stories.

People who look back in amazement at the cheapness of relatives who saved tinsel — tinsel was heavy stuff back then, not the cheap, thin filament stuff today. And it was put on in clumps — you could take it off in clumps and put it back in the box. Even the boxes were sturdy, and they were recloseable - not like the stuff that comes in a box you have to rip open.

You can see this tinsel was reused - the box has clearly been opened, used & taped closed.

[quote]And it was put on in clumps — you could take it off in clumps and put it back in the box.

Not in our house it wasn't. When we were kids and helped with the tinsel, my mother always instructed to put it on just two or three strands at a time, to give the tree "that delicate lacy look." (She wasn't so obsessive as to insist on one strand at a time.) Even so, after Christmas, it was removed two or three strands at a time and put back into the box, so it could be reused year after year.

yeah, my nana would have boxed me around the ears with a wooden spoon had I tried to do more than one strand at a time.

One strand at a time. It was painstaking.

We reused it year after year.

R271 here. My father wasn't allowed to help with the tinsel because, in my mother's words, "He just throws it on."

I prefer clumps. It looks more jolly, like fat people.

I took down our tree early this year (the 27th) because it had become faded/discolored (white fake) & I had a major dental extraction on the 6th & didn't want to deal with the tree along with everything else. We still have a couple or ornaments from the 40s/50s that are prized; I love the WQXR holiday stream, the live broadcast of 9 lessons & carols from King's College, by the time the time the 12 tolls from Big Ben are striking, I know it's getting "late", but I'm still listening to channel 858 on DirecTV & looking at the ceramic tree that my late mother made for us . . . I usually leave everything up until Russian Orthodox New Year (usually around the 14th to 16 of January).

[quote]My father wasn't allowed to help with the tinsel because, in my mother's words, "He just throws it on."

That might have been a metaphor for how he performed in the bedroom.