a very merry christmas to you

Christmas Eve is here. This year came so much faster it seems. I feel behind in my basic Christmas rituals. Right now I am watching White Christmas for the first time this season. That is weeks behind my usual viewing.

Ha! Well, no matter. It is here and it should be fun. My family does a theme Christmas every year. We have done Medieval Christmas, 1960's, Dutch, Hungarian and others. It makes each year unique. This year it is Depression Era Christmas. Soon, I need to go in my closet and find some outfit vaguely reminiscent of the 1930's. I am going for a Walton's version.

I found some great old music to play tonight, mostly from the 1930's. You can listen too if you want. You can find it here.

Here is the only Christmas item I could find in my collection from the 1930's. It is actually plastic and on the back is a calander for 1933:


I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas. I will leave you with this last Christmas postcard from December 24th 1917. It was from Emma and Edwin to their brother Oliver in New London, Minnesota.

Homefront Christmas

This image above is from a homemade Christmas card. It is a photograpah printed on really nice toothy thick paper. It is them folded and then folded again. When you open it it has this inside:



A funny Christmas card remarking on the weird world of rationing that people had to go through during World War II. It is one of my favorite finds.



A Christmas family portrait with the soldier brother included in the corner.

Christmas Lamps

This one above was sent to Berkeley, Ca in 1920 from one sister to another.

from Our House to Yours

Christmas is fast approaching and I am running out of time to post all the many Christmas postcards and photos I have. Oh, well, I guess that leaves more for next year. Just today I got a whole new handful at the Webfooters Postcard Club Meeting and Christmas Potluck.

So, I am going to ramp up the posting. Here are three.

This first one is of a quality I never see. It is incredibly beautifully done. Both of the circles are raised and the little circles around them are slightly raised, too. The paper feels more like a photo than a postcard. And, as you can see the pine boughs and berries are painted. These people had some serious money. It was printed in Britain and it says "Rotary Photographic Series". There is no postmark or date. On the back is written:

Wishing you a Merry Xmas and a Happy New year. From Ada to Grand Pa

This next one has a long message on the back and it fills out the whole card, so it was not mailed as a postcard. It is doesn't have a name it is addressed to it. it just says:

Thought you might like a picture of our old family home, tho you can see it anytime....It belongs to Edward and me now. Our Howell grandparents and family came there May 14 1884 so my mother had lived there 70 years lacking 2 days when she died May 12 1954. Mamma and Aunt Frank had a private school in the parlors...Hope you are well. Florence Anne coming for Christmas, then going to Sun Valley for a week.

This one has no writing on the back. The trees are slightly raised.

Warmest Wishes

I got about 6 of these jumbo matchbooks at the Webfooters Postcard Show last April. You may not be able to tell from the photos, but the matchbooks are 4.25" x 3.25". I had never seen anything like them before and all 6 that I got were in perfect condition with no matches missing.





Right now I wanted to share the Christmas ones. I will post the other ones at another time. The Santa one has the name Gil Stuempel letter pressed on the back. A quick search shows me one listing for Gilbert Stuempel. He was born in 1906 and died in 1993. He lived in Southern California.






The other matchbook was given by Edward V Bedney. I love the words on each match. A search on him finds also only one result. But, this is fascinating. The result is another collector site - The Universalist Ship Cancellation site. These people collect the cancellations of maritime letters. So close to what I do, but I know nothing about it and didn't even know a group like that existed.



Wow, this entry took a little turn in the road. Instead of just sharing these really neat jumbo matchbooks, I have to remark on how interesting it is that this man, Edward V Bedney has lived on in history due to things that most people throw away. Although he may have died before the internet was common, he is still searchable and present because of ephemeral things and people who collect and document them. The internet is so amazing. How crazy that something he presumably sent and something her received would both be found by collectors, valued and posted online.

a family christmas card

I wish there were signatures on this card. I have decided that this family is from Southern California, due to their sleeveless outfits. I am also going to guess that this is from around 1970.

My family never did the photo Christmas cards. It is kind of curious that we didn't considering my father was a photographer. It was probably too much money.

from Florence