OCR Text |
Show Till: OED-TI.ME CHKISTMAS OM-t inicrs caught in the holiday hol-iday rush and sizing at the wonderfully alluring panorama of I In; shop windows often fall into a reminiscent mood and relive re-live the Christ mases of long ago. Who does not fondly recall re-call t he magic of' Christmas in his childhood? Most of the presents were home-made. Perhaps grandma grand-ma furnished mittens, knitted hy oil lamp after you had been tucked in bed thick warm mittens with a long cord that extended up through your coat sleeves and around your neck ' to prevent loss. Auntie gave you a basket of Christmas cookies, shaped like animals and stars and covered with delicious de-licious colored sugar. Uncle Tom gave you a watch and his generosity appalled you even if it was the old tur- - .rf hat he had discarded. You can imagine the reaction you wourfd get if you tried giving a 192ri boy a second hand time-piecl;. time-piecl;. Mtyst of the presents were uscl'ttl,' in the olden days, including in-cluding a reefer coat or a pair of nttshoes. As for "bough-ten" "bough-ten" presents, they were limited limit-ed to "The- JErie Train Boy," by Alger, Ilentiy's "With Clive in India," a Npiiw Testament, a sled, a pair Jof skates and that most wondoA'ful of all old-time toys, a tin jmonkey that climbed a string, i At thai, Christmas of long ago represented proportionately proportion-ately as big an outlay as now, comparing earnings in the two periods. But the gift itself was secondary secon-dary to the spirit of the giver. Somehow every grown-up cant help believing the Christmas dinners of those days were superior. su-perior. The Christmas eve entertainment en-tertainment at the church was as enjoyable as the modern movie, and the ride in the cutter cut-ter over the deep snow beat the auto trip of 1925. Christmas is always changing chang-ing and (to adults) never for the better. |