Holiday Season, Yule See

The season and the cold has crept up on us. I wasn't totally ready for Christmas to loom so quickly, maybe the frost helped me. Also helping was an influx of Christmas cards and even a few telephone calls relating to the holidays . . . AND a couple of trips to the post office, waiting in line to mail packages -- so a variety of things has put us into the spirit of Christmas:

Also decorating the house, mostly inside with some outside, the banner (left side) is hanging on our front porch. Father Christmas, as he was described in a newsletter from Wisconsin Historical Society, has scheduled two days of having breakfast with him next Saturday and Sunday in Eagle, Wisconsin. Details can be found at:       www.oldworldwisconsin.wisconsinhistory.org

Every year we debate about the decorations and just to what level of detail we are going to go . . . this year was no different. At first it was -- do we get a tree or not and if we do, small or large. Well we made it over to the local Kiwanis Club tree lot and selected a mid-sized tree. The nice thing is that the tree fit into the back of the van and was up on the back porch within a few minutes of the purchase.

Gail always opts for "doing" the lights for which I am grateful. Then she adds the ornaments (most of which she has needle pointed). And little by little the house is transformed:

Each picture above is in or about our house except for the sailboat and the one below it which can be found at Dry Creek Vineyard Winery where we happened to be a couple of days ago. It is Dino's third holiday season, and he just takes it all in stride -- he has walked around town a bit with his Santa collar on . . .

Holidays Past

It seems that memories of holidays past are conjured up as we go about activities relating the day. We watched a "Hallmark Hall of Fame" production the other night, and that brings up pleasant thoughts of the holidays and even watching the newly released version of "The Sound of Music" evoked mellowness.

The ornaments and decorations as they were taken out of their storage boxes reminded us how "fun" this time of year really is. I was inundated with recalling different eras as I checked out a favorite site designed to do "just that".  From   www.reminisce.com:

I love looking at old advertisements and the above pages are sure familiar to me. One thing that I find interesting is that soft drinks almost never come in bottles anymore -- at least glass bottles, the kind that there was maybe a 2¢ deposit on and where lots of money could be made from enterprising kids . . .

And just maybe you have not finished your Christmas shopping yet -- the following pages just may give you some ideas -- it did years ago:

Times have certainly changed in that would giving "her" a Hoover or a set of  Pyrex really be in your best interest these days. Or check out the camera or the radio, they might be good nowadays in a museum collection. And fountain pens, Bulova watches and a set of Presto Cookware . . .

And then to lull away the days and evenings for us kids there were the non-electronic games that we played for hours and sometimes days on end:

Two of my favorites I don't see above -- and those are Monopoly and Star Reporter. We had certain friends that came over to play those games when there was no school. Monopoly we played with friends and with family. I recently saw a new version of the game board for Monopoly that would have really been fun to have years ago -- one that had built in banking drawers and drawers for real estate buildings and for moving pieces.
I would guess that Star Reporter is not around anymore partly due to the changing news reporting world.

A Bit About Genealogy

So where is Santa -- these days I am not sure, but back 100 years we looked for him and sure enough we found him (and his family) in four different censuses -- 1900, 1910, 1930, and the 1940:

Thanks to www.RootDig.com who alerted me to where I could find Santa in the four census years -- in Missouri of all places. And Santa's parents, siblings, and later his wife and children can be seen. They must have lead interesting lives.

And then thinking about Santa & St Nick I wondered how they came to be. Thanks to another site I got the answers:

So there we have it, the mysteries solved. Now how & when do we tell all the kids.

Isthmus Past

Lastly this goes back a bit farther than I can relate to, but some folks claim they know these kind of a facts about their lineage and ancestors -- good for them:

So that was a bit of our week, we hope your week went well! Have fun, see you all in a few!