Sepia Saturday give bloggers an opportunity to share their family history and memories through photographs.
Where I live there is little opportunity to find old postcards, so I was delighted to come across this delightful picture in a recently opened vintage shop in a nearby town. I'll be keeping an eye open for more.
I cannot remember having a Christmas stocking as a child, though we always hung pillowcases at the foot of our beds.
I cannot remember having a Christmas stocking as a child, though we always hung pillowcases at the foot of our beds.
An apocryphal story was told every year of my mother and aunt, as children, waking early and delving in the dark into their Christmas stockings. The house at that time did not have electricity and they thought they had come across a box of chocolates and opened it up to eat them before breakfast. But to their dismay they found them too hard and later discovered it was a box of dominoes!
Some more festive card's from my collection:
 A card from Germany 
The postcard above, sent in 1877, was in the family collection of a distant cousin. The verse reflects Victorian maudlin sentiment of the time,
but it is still a lovely picture.
 With best wishes to all my blog readers and a big thank you for all your encouraging comments  |
One of the many tableaux around the German Market
in Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh
We also had pillow cases but were quite happy to have them instead of stockings as we felt they would fit more presents in!
ReplyDeleteThe postcards are lovely - I must look around while in Netherlands to see if I can see any.
Oh, and Merry Christmas to you and your family
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't suppose dominoes would taste much like chocolate. How funny, but probably not at the time to them! Kit's family would fill stockings with little presents & a bit of candy & place them at the foot of the children's beds so we continued the tradition with our own kids. They'd wake up at 0:dark 30 in the morning, go through their stockings ooo'ing & ah'ing & giggling quietly, then go back to sleep until a decent hour when we all got up refreshed. Worked very nicely! Merry Christmas. :->
ReplyDeleteLovely scenes on those old cards. I remember we used to get chocolate coins and an orange in our stockings - I guess oranges were seen as treats back then, but I prefer the coins, and always bought them for our own children. Next Christmas we will hopefully be able to celebrate with our first grandchild visiting from England, so perhaps I can look for those coins again, or maybe not, as he or she will only be eight months old by then:-) Merry Christmas!
ReplyDeleteWe had pillow cases too, not that there was much to put in them during the war. I didn't know what chocolate money and a a tangerine were till much later, I have on seen cards like yours on blogs; you have a lovely selection.
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas.
Pillowcases, eh? I've heard of shoes before; heard of hand-made paper boxes (that Santa would fill); heard of stockings (of course, here in the USA)...but I've never heard of pillow cases -- that's GREAT!
ReplyDeleteI wonder what images from our time will people of the future use to illustrate their olde-time holiday cards?
ReplyDeleteBest wishes for a joyful holiday and bright new year!
HA HA -- that domino story is hilarious. Happy New Year, Sue!
ReplyDeleteThat's nice little collection. I especially like the New Year's Gifts card.
ReplyDeleteI had a pillowcase too and my Mum remembers having one in the 1920s! Lovely old cards Sue and that Nativity scene is just effect - so simple. All good wishes for 2014
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