Christmas Decorations

Family Memories

Christmas Decorations

I’m lucky enough to have a few of the family Christmas decorations, which I get out most years. Both sides of the family were from Delaware County, in the Catskill Mountains of New York, but Dad’s father had left rural life. He was a civil engineer for the Delaware and Hudson Railroad, and they lived in a suburb of Albany, New York. Maybe that’s why Dad’s family had the village they got out at Christmas time. It was supposed to go around the base of the Christmas tree with a HO toy railroad circling the base of the tree. My grandparents’ tree, however, was up on a window seat, so the little village lived on the sideboard.

My Grandparents’ house at Christmas with the tree perched on the window seat. My mother is on the right in satin. The sideboard with the village was behind her. From left to right, my sister (who knew how to smile for the photo), me (who didn’t even know to look at Dad), Great-aunt Ella, my mother’s mother, my father’s mother, and my father’s father, the railroad man.

The little buildings had red cellophone windows and a hole in the back for the old incandescent—and hot—Christmas bulbs to light up the eight little buildings.

I decided to poke around the internet to see what I could find about them. Turns out they come out of the tradition that made this astounding creation in the Art Institute of Chicago—an elaborate Neapolitan Nativity with life teeming all around the manger.

Apparently, my little train village is known as a Putz(!) from the Moravian tradition. It’s a depiction of ordinary life with the nativity in the center of life. I had no idea that the way I always set it up was so traditional. I found a little manger scene that was just the same size.

Apparently, the traditional ones evolved in the 20^th Century into mass-produced Putz train themes sold by Woolworth’s On E-Bay, these buildings are listed as “Compo HO Gauge Putz, Made in Japan.” Compo, according to Google, is animal glue, linseed oil, pine rosin in powder form, and whiting. Definitely made way before plastic or even bakelite. By the time they were sold in Woolworth’s they were meant to be in a circle under the Christmas tree with a train circling past them.

On Etsy, a listing had the actual box it came in—which apparently came with the people. There was no sign of people in our set. It shows how much the powerful Black Pullman Porters union was associated with train travel that there were two in the set. I’m not a fan of the traveling plutocrats though! She looks like Margaret Dumont, the Marx Brothers’ straight woman, and he looks like W.C. Fields.

It’s just possible that the village doesn’t date from my father’s childhood, but instead his younger brother, who was 14 years younger. He was doted on where my Dad not so much. My theory is based on the holes for the strings of electric lights. Apparently, they weren’t widely available until the 1930s when they could be made with bakelite.

Before the strings of lights, my grandparents used candles. Back then, they didn’t get a tree until just before Christmas Eve so that the needles wouldn’t be dried out when the candles were lit. We used to still have the clips for the candles, which had little saucers to catch the hot wax. Even after the electric lights came in, the risk of fire was enormous because those old incandescent bulbs burned hot.

I remember one year, we were riding around our neighborhood to see all the decorations, when Mom said, “that’s an unusual effect.” It wasn’t an effect. The family had left the lights on the tree in their living room and had gone out. The fire was raging behind the plate glass window.

I think the late lamented Woolworth’s was the source of much of Christmas, as least for my folks. Woolworth’s sold German ornaments that were glass blown into hand-carved molds. They are so light weight they are barely perceptible in my hands. Apparently mercury, lead, or zinc was swirled on the inside to make them shiny and reflective. The indented one was designed to reflect the lights on the trees better. Others were then painted.

Even more than the little village, the original childhood ornaments came out to a place of honor on the tree. I think that the silver grapes and red indented ball were from Dad’s tree. I’m sure though that the St. Nick was Mom’s. Unlike Dad’s family, times were tough on the farm and she cherished her small treasures. There’s a reason it’s in mint condition, 100 years later. [edited because St. Nick didn’t show and he has to be here!]

In my image search for Santa, I came across this photo of a box and it looked so familiar. Our Christmas ornaments were kept in it year after year, so I saw it for decades, but I never noticed what was on the cover.

It has Santa shaking hands with Uncle Sam on the lid. Even Christmas ornaments reflected the arc of World War II. In the 1940s, German glass ornaments were no longer available, so American manufacturers stepped in, especially “Shiny Brite.” They wanted to make sure we realized that these were ornaments that were part of the war effort. The meaning of Christmas was transformed in the years of the war, when people sang that they were dreaming of the Christmases they used to know, now that they were far from home.

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PS. The poll showed that the overwhelming majority of people who bothered to answer wanted a single blog, but I’ll try to signal when it’s not Hyde Park so folks can delete the ones they don’t want to read.