Christmas in the 1920s and the 1970s....

Christmas 1920 - taken from the web!

It's Christmas Eve 2011. Trees are decorated, gifts are wrapped and placed under the tree. In most homes more gifts than you can count. In 2011 we are all truly blessed to have as much as we do. Times can still be tough in today's world but things are still so different than they were when my grandmother was a little girl in the 1920s. Imagine waking up Christmas morning to only one gift and that gift was usually a doll, sometimes home made. No playstations, Wii, iPhones or computers back then. No fancy gift wrap or bows, just a gift that might be wrapped, maybe not. No furnaces back then so the house was cold on Christmas morning until nan's parents got the wood fire blazing. They didn't have electricity so no fancy decorations or lights of many colors spread all over the tree and house back then. Christmas time was the only time they would see oranges and it was a special treat all of it's own to the kids. I don't recall nan telling me that they went to church at Christmas but if they did it would've been to the Milton Christian Church. The family was close and they stayed together like most families did back then. Doing things together was so important especially at Christmas time. Guess it just goes to show that spending a fortune doesn't always mean Christmas is WOW! The WOW thing about Christmas to my grandmother and her family was being together.
My grandmother passed that same belief on to her kids and grand kids. Nan always made sure we were together at Christmas and we learned at an early age how important a close family was. Our family has a treasure from Christmas 1976, a recording of all of us kids wishing nan a Merry Christmas. At that time the oldest of us grand kids was my cousin Pat who passed away in 2003. Pat was 14 at the time of the recording and the youngest was my cousin Stephanie who was 2. Awesome Christmas memories don't always have to mean thousands of dollars worth of gifts, the special memories I have are memories of my family. This time of year I tend to think back and remember those times and think of those people who made it memorable, many who are no longer with us.

I'm sure most of the readers of my blog have many fond memories of Christmases gone by. If you would like to share a memory or two, feel free to tell us about them.

Merry Christmas to all of my blog reader and all the best in 2012!