Have you seen the Christmas decorations in the stores already?

They appeared along with the Halloween decorations, while the Thanksgiving items have been hidden somewhere to be seen later. I don’t like this early holiday stuff.

Having said that, let me tell you why the Edwardsburg Museum has put up their Christmas decorations and decorated the new exhibit with Christmas items.  This year the 1950s have been the main focus of the revolving display. With all of the items from the 1950s, it seemed fitting that a Christmas display from that decade would be the logical choice for the holiday season.

So starting last Saturday, the new display of “A 1950s Christmas in this Old House” is ready for viewing. Because the Museum closes for the season on Dec. 13, it only allows this exhibit to be up for six weeks.

Trying to find things from the 1950s has been an exciting pursuit. Now the Christmas holidays of the ‘50s is another story. The problem seems that decorations from 64 years ago are pretty scarce. Most things have deteriorated or have been discarded. Not much was salvageable, but the museum is persistent and there are some things of a 1950s Christmas on display.

I looked at my Christmas pictures of the 1950s and found several things that I had forgotten and I wished that I had saved. We didn’t have a fireplace in our house so the dilemma was where to hang the Christmas stockings. So I purchased a red imitation brick cardboard fireplace probably from Kriesge’s or Grants store and put it in our living room. Next to it I placed the live Christmas tree in the playpen to protect it from three crawling and running babies and a  new puppy. The babies were an eight month old, a 1 1/2 year old and a 3 year old. On the cardboard fireplace I hung hooks for the stockings.

At first there were three and the next year four and the next year five and not until 1961 the final sixth stocking was hung with care. My mother made the stockings for all of us and we still use them today.

Now the fireplace is long gone and there are over 22 stockings to be hung. So I put two sets of expandable hooks on the kitchen wall. Filling theses stockings is a family tradition in our house. Everyone gets a pair of ugly socks.

Now for the Christmas tree. For many years my husband would go somewhere, he never told me where, he would cut a tree and bring it home. It was never a good looking tree. But his thought was that is was placed next to a wall so only three sides needed to look good. Some years he cut branches off the bottom, drilled holes in the trunk and put the extra branches to fill in the bare spots on the tree.

Finally, I was able to talk him into purchasing a tree from the Lion’s Club tree sale. After sweeping up the last of the pine needles on the Fourth of July left over from Christmas, we purchased an artificial tree.

After all of this, I miss the smell of a fresh-cut Christmas tree.

 

Jo-Ann Boepple works at the Edwardsburg Area History Museum.