Merry Christmas, Everyone --

Lauren and I have been collecting a bunch of new materials and have just posted three new articles published in the first decade of the 20th century on different Christmas topics. The content is up and because the original articles were published without pictures, I'll be looking for suitable illustrations and images to go with them in the next couple days.

The topics include:
Christmas Decorations
Christmas Dinner Without a Maid
What to give for Christmas

I restrained myself with respect to the recipes. One recipe was for Ice Cream with Popcorn. Enjoy!

Rikki & Lauren

This year we've added lots of images and books on historic Christmas celebrations and meals.
The Arts and Crafts Style Holiday




Lauren

Thanks for posting the articles.It's great to look over them and see what our families did years ago for the holidays,especially if they didn't have a lt of money to spend or waste as people do nowadays.

Hello Rikki,Lauren and all,
While I was writing the History of the Arts and Crafts Movement I didn't think of the A&C holidays of which I am sure were as festive as they are today. Holidays during those times must have been very different from what they are today where the stockings were hung by a real working fireplace and the folks of the times were a jolly bunch indeed.

We folks of today have different memories of how the Christmases were in our own families as well as those of our friends. Some memories were happy while others were sad due to the loss of a loved one as they are today.

However, lets remeniss on how many of us might think they were back then;
Remember the Christmas Carol play and then the movie which since it first was played out on the stage and the various phases of the different spirits that haunted old Mr. Scrouge with the sound effects that made us almost jump out of our seats when we watched it unfold.

How Mr Scrouge was visited three times during the night showing him the past, present, and future and how he awoke to run to the window and throw some money out to a boy with the instructions to buy a goose and not a turkey to carry to the Bob Cratchet residence and even showing up him self to partake in the festivities. Remember little tiny Tim saying "God Bless us, each and everone?

That of course was only a play but, a good awakening of the folks of that period for it has been a classic that has lasted even today in the years of the 21st Century.

Then lets also go back in time when the Mayflower ship landed on Plymounth rock and as time went along with there relation with the Indians, who taught them to raise Maize. More commonly known today as corn and it was then that maybe the turkey became the main entry of the meal that was celebrated by all of the Pilgrams and Indians of that time showing the people of a different race can indeed live in harmony together and each learning from each other.

Ah, yes it is nice to invision how things were back then, not by living the times but, instead remembering the tales and yarns of our own ancesters as told time and time again that in our minds would magically transport us back in time to those festive years.

I can myself remember how my grand mother used to tell of the stringing of cranberries and pop corn on a thread as decorations for the Christmas trees and how candles were once used to light the room as they were placed on the trees, but only for a short time due to the possibility of a fire. It is nice to remember some of the happy time we all knew from the passing years and this holds true today to an extent as the world and the action of those poor souls who are struck with the sins of today. However we won't go into that as it would keep us from remembering the festive years gone by.

Composed and written by;

Ralph Jones in the year of 2008 on this 28th of September.