Celebrations: Christmas, Agua Caliente - 1953

That was the year Mother made matching pajamas for me and my doll.

[From my personal collection]

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Celebrations: Apollo 8's Christmas Eve 1968 Message

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Christmas Songs

I spent the evening with old friends singing Christmas carols after a delicious buffet dinner. It's the only fancy party I go to each year.

[Art and Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. "Christmas song of gladness -..." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 19--. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e3-5fca-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99]

Now I'm ready for Christmas!


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: Christmas, 1948

One of the very few "real" Christmas trees we ever had.* I was a year and a half and don't remember it at all.

[From my personal collection]

*All the Christmases I recall were spent in the trailer and we had a small artificial tree.

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Party!!!

Tonight the usual suspects gathered at my house for my annual Christmas party. The food and wine were good (as always) but the conversation was was stellar (as expected).

[From my personal collection]

I always have such a great time that I forget to take pictures of the group. Maybe next year.


© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Agua Caliente Regional Park - Christmas, 1955

Dad Currey wrote that he took this photo from the picnic area at the park. We spent every Christmas and Easter vacation there until the Curreys acquired the property in Ocotillo.

[From my personal collection]

I've added the yellow outline to our rig to make it easy for you to locate.



© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Today's Impulse Buy!

What can I say?

[Mine, all  mine!]

These made me laugh--and they were half price.


© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

A Final Goodbye to the Christmas Tree (Until Next Year)

"The Cultured Christmas Tree," Martin Moyer productions, 1968 (National Archives and Records Administration channel).  Note: there is a red tractor sighting in this video.

My mom always has a real Christmas tree, but this year was the first year we had one.  Since Steve and I were knocked out with a cough and cold the entire blasted vacation, there won't be too many other things to remember this Christmas by (except an inordinate amount of sleeping!).



© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

5th Day of Christmas: Five Gold(en) Rings

European goldfinch, photo by By Pierre Dalous - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, 

One party we missed this year was at my mom's former coworker Barbara's house.  A highlight of Barbara's party is the caroling--she has a pianist and plenty of Christmas lyrics booklets for all the guests, and we sing all the classics.  There is one rule--Barbara is the only one to sing the "five...golden...rings"  line for "The Twelve Days of Christmas.

I always thought this a strange lyric, as the true love seemed to offer up only measly birds until the 5 gold rings, but according to Mental Floss "12 Things You Might Not Know About "The Twelve Days of Christmas" it is just likely refers to even more birds lol:

5. AND "5 GOLDEN RINGS" PROBABLY DON'T REFER TO WHAT YOU THINK THEY REFER TO.
There’s pretty good evidence suggesting "five golden rings" is actually a reference to the yellowish rings around a pheasant’s neck or to “goldspinks,” an old name for a pretty little bird called the Goldfinch—not to the hand jewelry. And that actually makes sense, considering every other lyric in the first seven days of the song references a bird: a partridge, turtle doves, French hens (or “fat ducks,” depending on the version), calling birds (or black birds), swans and geese.

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Tudor Christmas Cookalong from Hampton Court Palace

Thanks to The History Blog for bringing these videos to my attention.

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: Marc's First Christmas - San Diego, 2002

[My grandson Marc with his parents on the stairs to my home, from my personal collection]

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Monday Is for Mothers: Timney P. Watts & Jesse Warren Jr.

My paternal fifth great grandparents Jesse Warren Jr. and Timney P. Watts were married on December 24, 1824* in Morgan County, Georgia.

[Morgan County Marriage Book, 1821 - 1835. Marriage Books, Morgan County Ordinary Court, Georgia Archives.]

Jesse Jr. died on January 6, 1826, just over two years after their marriage leaving his widow Timney and their 3½ month old son, my ancestor Jesse Thomas Simeon (J.T.S.) Warren.

*Although it may seem strange to us to have a wedding on Christmas Eve, we have to remember that the Christmas customs we're familiar with date from the mid-19th century and later.



© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: Les Grands Magasins - Paris, 2009

November, the final month of my visit to France in 2009, was spent in Paris. The famous department stores (grands magasins) on Boulevard Haussmann, Au Printemps and Galeries Lafayette, certainly know how to put on a Christmas show!

[All from my personal collection]

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: Christmas, 1902/03

[Graves, C. H. , -1943. Christmas Morning. [Philadelphia: The Universal Photo Art Co., C.H. Graves, publisher, c1903, ca. 1902]

Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/90709344/. Accessed December 25, 2016)]

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: Christmas Eve, 1876

[Christmas eve--getting ready for Santa Claus. [published, 1876] Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/92520926/. Accessed December 24, 2016. ]

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Monday Is for Mothers - December 2016

But it's also for my annual Christmas party. Here's a picture of the house before the guests arrived. Once they showed up we were having too much fun for me to remember to take any photos.

[From my personal collection]

And I had the bones of a good post ready explaining the identity of those heirs of my great great great grandmother Timney P. Watts Warren Phillips' whose names I didn't recognize but it's getting late so I'll postpone it.

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Christmas 1947 with the Curreys

Mother kept a baby book for me so I have things to share about my first Christmas in the Currey family in Encanto. Here are some cards, gift tags and even some 1947 wrapping paper.

[All from my personal collection]

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Christmas 1958 with the Curreys

After that cold wind drove us away from Joshua Tree in 1953, we continued to spend our Christmas vacation at Agua Caliente until 1958, when once again we tried a different location, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona. It was a success! At least we weren't driven away by inclement weather.

But somehow our Christmas tree got left at home that year (not the presents though) so I made my own tiny tree using buttons from Mother's sewing kit) to decorate a small bare branch. Dad took a photo of it which is so badly out of focus* that I won't inflict it on you.

[Probably Twin Peaks Campground, from my personal collection]

[Our truck and trailer on the left side of the park]

*I don't think there's one decent photo of a Christmas tree in the whole Currey collection.


© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Christmas 1981: In the Kitchen At Bob and Claudia's

My Grandmother, Aunt Claudia, and Great Aunt Fern getting things ready for the table.  Bob and Claudia always served delicious food.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Christmas 1948 with the Curreys

Because we usually spent the holiday in the trailer, our tree was a small artificial one that got brought out every Christmas Eve after I had gone to sleep. You can catch a glimpse of it here.

But in 1948 that tradition hadn't started yet and we had a real tree. I was about a year and a half at the time--it's possible that I remember the tinsel (but nothing else).

[From my personal collection]

The tree was a small one, set on the built-in cabinet on west wall of the living/dining room of the Curreys' Encanto home. The south wall was mostly window--there were wood venetian blinds and you can tell from the shadow on the wall that half of them had been raised for the photo.*

* There's a 1933 photo of the exterior of the dining room here.


© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.