12 Years of Christmas
[posted by Callimachus]
Like a lot of families before the age when a cheap digital camera was a standard feature on everything from telephones to nail clippers, mine only took photos on special occasions. Which means the family photo album is a cross-section of recurring holidays, notably Christmas. If we took 48 photos in calendar year 1966, probably 24 of them were of Christmas and the rest of summer vacation.
Which means I now have a set of prints that could be a cultural archivist's trove of middle class Mid-Atlantic American non-sectarian Christmas tree present displays of the 1960s.
Which means I'm going to inflict them on you.
Here's the first, from 1960. Pay no attention to that infant humpty-dumpty character. Do note that the presents mostly are neatly boxed, and that the loose ones include a large coffee pot, obviously a timely gift for the parents of a six-month-old.
Like a lot of families before the age when a cheap digital camera was a standard feature on everything from telephones to nail clippers, mine only took photos on special occasions. Which means the family photo album is a cross-section of recurring holidays, notably Christmas. If we took 48 photos in calendar year 1966, probably 24 of them were of Christmas and the rest of summer vacation.
Which means I now have a set of prints that could be a cultural archivist's trove of middle class Mid-Atlantic American non-sectarian Christmas tree present displays of the 1960s.
Which means I'm going to inflict them on you.
Here's the first, from 1960. Pay no attention to that infant humpty-dumpty character. Do note that the presents mostly are neatly boxed, and that the loose ones include a large coffee pot, obviously a timely gift for the parents of a six-month-old.
