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Decorations of yesteryear

Is your house all decked out for the holidays?  Or perhaps you’re like my family — or mainly my sons — who have a ‘strict’ decorating schedule and require certain decorations to go up in a certain order at a certain time?  (Scoff if you will, but, one year, we tried to put the tree up at the ‘wrong’ time and the tree lights died and we were missing branches.  We waited until the ‘right’ time and everything was there and working.)  Any way, decorations will be plentiful in the days ahead.

I read an article on a nostalgia Facebook page that got me thinking about the kinds of decorations we used ‘back in the day.’  Some of the decorations mentioned — like bubble lights — never found their way into our home when I was growing up.  Several of them did and I wonder if you had them as well.

First up was the aluminum Christmas tree.  Ah, nothing like the smell of aluminum to remind you of Christmas.  My family didn’t have one, but my grandfather did.  I will concede he did work for Alcoa Aluminum, so?  Anyway, it came with the requisite rotating disc of red, green, and blue to light up the tree and it was proudly displayed in their front window.  Grandpa was all about the latest gadgets, so naturally that tree would be something he would want.  To this day I cannot figure out how Grandma let him display that tree.  Our church had three of those trees displayed on the balcony of the youth building in front of a wall of floor to ceiling windows along a major highway.  Were any of your families a member of the aluminum tree crowd?

Next on the list was a train around the tree.  My dad was a model railroader.  Need I say more?  The train layout would begin in the basement and migrate to the living room every year.  I can still see my mom shaking her head as he tried, in vain, to enlarge the scope of the under-tree display.  It was his hobby from childhood.  (My sister now lives in dad’s childhood home which still boasts a nick in the baseboard where he ran a train off the track as a child.)

On to the tree itself, and the list mentioned satin and Styrofoam ornament balls.  Guilty!  We had them in every color and in mass quantity.  Scoff if you will, but they were a vast improvement in longevity over the delicate glass ornaments that preceded them.  If you’re honest, we all broke at least one of those glass ornaments in our lifetime.  I remember our tree falling over when I was little, landing on the train board (see the above paragraph!), and breaking several of those glass ornaments.  There was no breaking those Styrofoam ones.

Lastly, tinsel.  I personally am not a fan of tinsel and prefer beads or garland.  Every self-respecting tree in the 1950’s and ’60’s had tinsel.  I remember Mom instructing Dad how to delicately hang each strand of tinsel on the tree.  I also remember that tinsel shorting out train track and clogging up the vacuum cleaner, but that tinsel made an appearance every year.  Except on Grandpa’s aluminum tree.  That would be redundant, even for Grandpa.

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LIONS ANNUAL AUCTION

The Beverly Lions Club will be hosting their 11th annual Christmas Display and Treats Auction Sunday, this afternoon, December 4, at 2 p.m. Browsing of the displays and auction items will be held from 1-2 p.m. prior to the auction.  The event will be held at 216 1/2 5th Street in Beverly, next to Dough Boyz Pizza.

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