This was our Christmas tree in 1955. It stood in the corner of the old living room on the farm. As I recall the room had one rocking chair, a plant table with some fancy leaved begonias and a couple of extra kitchen chairs...and the tree always found its place in the corner. My Dad always went out and cut down a Christmas tree, I never went along....maybe my brothers went along when they were older.
You can almost see the doorway to my bedroom behind the rocking chair. It was a tiny room with a twin bed. Cozy but very cold in the winter time. My brother slept in a crib in my parents room. It was a huge old farmhouse with four bedrooms upstairs, but we were not supposed to play up there and it was not heated in the winter.
Far Side
21 comments:
My dad was taking photos that year with his Brownie too!
Oh how I recall that tinsel! And how it got everywhere.
When I tell people I grew up in a seven bedroom farmhouse, they immediately assume wealth. I have to explain that the three bedrooms upstairs were just storage as it was too cold to live there during winters and too hot in the summer. The four bedrooms downstairs were ice cubes on cold winter days with just a single wood burning stove in our living room. Since there was no AC for much of my youth, summer was the equalizer since it was equally hot everywhere.
Our tree looked pretty much the same in the 1950s - dripping with tinsel. We had to wait so long to see photos from any event. Mom would mail the film off to be developed, and we would wait.
Unheated bedrooms was just the norm I guess. My childhood bedroom had a floor register that looked down into the kitchen. It was covered up at some point, and a small electric heat unit was installed along the floorboard. Our upstairs in the big old farmhouse we lived in when first married had no heat either. But there were registers in the floor in 2 of the 4 bedrooms.
We had a similar corner for the Christmas tree in our old farmhouse. Though occasionally it switched corners because Mom moved the furniture around.
My Dad always cut a tree too, and we almost ended up with a Charlie Brown tree, with a limited number of branches. By the time it was covered in decorations, lights and tinsel, it looked okay. But as a teenager I can remember going out with Dad to find a "better" tree. If I remember correctly, I didn't have any more luck.
Your photo provided memories for both of us. :)
Christmas trees in the fifties were more natural and a little ragged. I remember the great smell that filled the house when the trees were thawing out.
I love your old photos. My dad always used to take us out to pick out a tree - sometimes at a cut down place, sometimes just out of a lot that was selling them. When I was 16, he decided he wanted a fake one, and I cried! I was so upset!
If we ever have cats that behave, I'd love to get a real one again. Maybe when Lemmy is a few years older, we'll give it a try.
OHHHHHHHHHHHHH I would have loved to play upstairs---and been in trouble for going up there.
The tree looks similar to the one that stood in the corner of the living room on the farm. My Mom carefully pul the iciclesonone at a time. They were removed in the same way and used the following Christmas. The cards were also displayed on a string over the window curtains.
I would have been 4 years and 9 months old that Christmas. We would have had tinsel on the tree, too. Everybody had tinsel. I remember I really missed that draped sparkle when it wasn't popular anymore. How time flies!!
Merry Christmas to you and yours! :)
Those were the days.... you are only 4 months older than me... my Christmases were very similar. Dad cut a tree, and we all decked it out, mostly with Dad helping as Mom always had a baby or a toddler to deal with. Tinsel put on in single strands, always the last thing to go on. I still hang my cards on a string in the window.
Merry Christmas to all!
It is sweet!
My mom made us put the tinsel on the tree strand by strand. And then after Christmas we had to remove it strand by strand to reuse the next year. I lived in town and our upstairs had heat. But I remember friends who all slept downstairs in the winter in one room, no downstairs bedrooms. And I remember going to a tupperware party in the seventies where my friend had the stairway draped in blankets as the upstairs was "closed" in the winter.
I love seeing tinsel on the Christmas trees, which never have them these days. Nice old photos, though.
I enjoyed hearing about your home as a child and seeing the tree. We always had a silver tinsel tree with a color wheel when I was a child. As an adult, we sometimes had a real tree, but we usually have an artificial tree.
We have the tinsel icicles on our tree even this year. I've used the same bag of tinsel for 45 years now! I just take it off and put it in the bag and keep it for the next year. :-) I think I'm cheap, but it still works.
Blessings and hugs,
Betsy
I love looking at your old photos. Such memories to cherish! Merry Christmas to you and your whole family!
Somewhere I have a picture of our Christmas tree in 1952. It's right in front of the front door ( which never got used). There are actual candles on the tree.That was the last year we used those. Thanks for the memories.
I remember carefully hanging strings if tinsel on our "natural" tree, cut down in the woods somewhere. And cold bedrooms.
We had only cedar trees growing wild in Iowa. They were usually turning brown and we loaded them down with ornaments, a few lights, and lots of tinsel. I was so excited my first year of marriage when we bought a tree. It was nice when they printed the year date on the booklets of picture.
I remember having a tree with tinsel, bubble lights and the large colored lights. I loved it and that is how , I still decorate a 6ft tree and also put shiny brites and other old balls from around the 40's and 50's. Then there's my other 24 trees! I only have a 9ft a two 7ft and 3 5ft. The rest are 3ft and a couple 2ft. Lots of work and my husband was the one that kept dragging it all up from the basement. I'm exhausted. Needless to say I informed him that this will not happen again next year! Merry Christmas!
Years ago was a time when taking pictures and getting them developed could be an expensive undertaking, and now we treasure those old photos. Things have changed so much, but it's good that you have these old photos to remember your childhood with.
I have very few photos of my childhood as my parents never took photos but I found a few that a neighbor probably took. We lived in Chicago in an apartment (ghetto...lol!) and the landlord would turn off the heat at night to save money so I was always cold. Now, I just turn up the thermostat!
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