#SongoftheDay Christmas Comes But Once a Year (1936 Cartoon)
One time when I visited my mother, she had a small bag of Christmas decorations sitting by the door. When I asked why, she said she was getting rid of them.
This blew my mind, because my mother is a hoarder. She hardly ever gets rid of anything.
I looked through the decorations, and they all looked to be from the 1950s. They were children's ornaments, I'd say: clowns and cartoony animals, Humpty Dumpty, various characters. I remember hanging these on the Christmas tree when I was a child, but they must have belonged to one of my parents. Probably my father--his mother loved Christmas. She way overbought for us grandkids, and would sometimes tell us that her family was too poor for Christmas presents, when she was growing up. When she came here from Wales in the 1930s, her family lived in a homeless shelter for a while. The only gifts she and her siblings received throughout her childhood came from a charity run by the local newspaper.
My grandparents were both factory workers, so they weren't made of money, but I imagine my grandmother went all out at Christmasstime. I really have no idea. My father never talked about his childhood.
Anyway, I couldn't believe my mother was getting rid of this pieces of plastic nostalgia, so I brought them home with me. I just found the bag in my linen closet, and I figured I'd set up the little decorations on my windowsill.
Then I took them out of the bag and I looked at them.
I mean... really looked at them.
They were grotesque. Truly. Have you ever seen plastic Christmas decorations from the 50s? Well, the ones I have in my possession are hideous. They're creepy. One is a red circus bear balancing on a ball, but its eyes are black sequins. It looks like a demon.
I'm middle-aged--I spend half my day down Memory Lane. But here's the thing about nostalgia: when you sit down and examine it, it's rarely as pleasant as what you remember.
This blew my mind, because my mother is a hoarder. She hardly ever gets rid of anything.
I looked through the decorations, and they all looked to be from the 1950s. They were children's ornaments, I'd say: clowns and cartoony animals, Humpty Dumpty, various characters. I remember hanging these on the Christmas tree when I was a child, but they must have belonged to one of my parents. Probably my father--his mother loved Christmas. She way overbought for us grandkids, and would sometimes tell us that her family was too poor for Christmas presents, when she was growing up. When she came here from Wales in the 1930s, her family lived in a homeless shelter for a while. The only gifts she and her siblings received throughout her childhood came from a charity run by the local newspaper.
My grandparents were both factory workers, so they weren't made of money, but I imagine my grandmother went all out at Christmasstime. I really have no idea. My father never talked about his childhood.
Anyway, I couldn't believe my mother was getting rid of this pieces of plastic nostalgia, so I brought them home with me. I just found the bag in my linen closet, and I figured I'd set up the little decorations on my windowsill.
Then I took them out of the bag and I looked at them.
I mean... really looked at them.
They were grotesque. Truly. Have you ever seen plastic Christmas decorations from the 50s? Well, the ones I have in my possession are hideous. They're creepy. One is a red circus bear balancing on a ball, but its eyes are black sequins. It looks like a demon.
I'm middle-aged--I spend half my day down Memory Lane. But here's the thing about nostalgia: when you sit down and examine it, it's rarely as pleasant as what you remember.
That said, I still have a soft spot for this cartoon from the 30s that I watched as a child, about unsupervised orphans at Christmas.
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