We are taking down our own Christmas tree today...
Anyone else?
http://www.traceythorn.com/
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Monday, December 24, 2012
Christmas Eve, 1944 by Dean Harding McGarity
On Christmas Eve in 1944, the war in the Pacific Theater was raging. I said goodbye to my husband, Steven Turner, at the train station in Los Angeles, California. We had been married only a year. A photographer and chief petty officer in the Naval Air Forces, he was off to San Diego for his next assignment aboard an aircraft carrier.
Amid a horde of people—men in uniform and women crying, hugging and calling goodbyes—I stood, holding back tears and panic as he stepped on the train. He turned at the last minute and shouted above the din, “I’ll be home for Christmas, I promise.” “Promise,” I mouthed. Steven smiled his lovely honey smile and nodded.
I went back home to Vicksburg, Mississippi, and took up my job at the local welfare office. I lived with three other “war brides” in an old antebellum home presided over by a dear, elderly lady.
I waited for his letters, letters that often told of distant islands under a different sun, of Japanese suicide plans that missed their mark, of loneliness and longing.
The “brides” and I felt blessed to have one another, sharing our fears and loneliness, offering comforting words when letters didn’t arrive, keeping one another company at the movies or on long walks, keeping a radio vigil when news came of battles in far-off places.
Suddenly, the war was over—Japan had surrendered! We laughed and yelled and ran down the street, talking to strangers and even hugging them. Then we settled down to wait.
Time passed, and the letters came telling me about Japan and POW camps they flew over, dropping food and supplies. This was good work, I knew, but I wanted my husband home.
And then it was December and Christmas Eve. I stayed late at work, packing food baskets that would be distributed the next day to some of our clients. I returned to an empty house. The “brides” had gone to their homes for Christmas. I would go south tomorrow to have dinner with my family.
My landlady and I ate a solitary meal together, and she spoke of Christmas past, and I thought of Christmas last. Finally, sadly, I climbed the stairs and went to my room. Later, listening to the radio, I heard Bing Crosby singing "I’ll Be Home for Christmas." The music made me weep.
It was almost midnight and still I could not sleep. I moved over to the window seat and looked out at the street. The icy moon seemed to light up the world.
A car turned the corner and came slowly down the street. It was a taxi, which stopped in front of my house. Curious, I leaned against the window. A tall figure emerged from the back. The driver came around the car and shook his hand. Suddenly, I knew.
Miraculously, I knew.
Forgetting my feet were bare, I ran down the stairs, out the front door and down the sidewalk, not even feeling the freezing concrete beneath my feet. He turned, opened his arms and picked me up. I was laughing and crying. He asked the cabbie, “Will you please bring my bag into the house? This lady has begun to go barefoot in freezing weather.”
Then he whispered to me, “I promised, remember?”
And the year we’d spent apart vanished like a fleck of foam.
—Dean Harding McGarity
Duncanville, Texas
Author Dean Harding McGarity with her husband, Steven, Christmas 1945
I received a lovely note here at "Oh, By The Way" from Ms. McGarity on my original posting of her story and photo (here). Thank you Ms. McGarity, for sharing your touching story with us. If you liked this story, perhaps you would like her book COMFORT ME WITH APPLES, available from Amazon here.
Amid a horde of people—men in uniform and women crying, hugging and calling goodbyes—I stood, holding back tears and panic as he stepped on the train. He turned at the last minute and shouted above the din, “I’ll be home for Christmas, I promise.” “Promise,” I mouthed. Steven smiled his lovely honey smile and nodded.
I went back home to Vicksburg, Mississippi, and took up my job at the local welfare office. I lived with three other “war brides” in an old antebellum home presided over by a dear, elderly lady.
I waited for his letters, letters that often told of distant islands under a different sun, of Japanese suicide plans that missed their mark, of loneliness and longing.
The “brides” and I felt blessed to have one another, sharing our fears and loneliness, offering comforting words when letters didn’t arrive, keeping one another company at the movies or on long walks, keeping a radio vigil when news came of battles in far-off places.
Suddenly, the war was over—Japan had surrendered! We laughed and yelled and ran down the street, talking to strangers and even hugging them. Then we settled down to wait.
Time passed, and the letters came telling me about Japan and POW camps they flew over, dropping food and supplies. This was good work, I knew, but I wanted my husband home.
And then it was December and Christmas Eve. I stayed late at work, packing food baskets that would be distributed the next day to some of our clients. I returned to an empty house. The “brides” had gone to their homes for Christmas. I would go south tomorrow to have dinner with my family.
My landlady and I ate a solitary meal together, and she spoke of Christmas past, and I thought of Christmas last. Finally, sadly, I climbed the stairs and went to my room. Later, listening to the radio, I heard Bing Crosby singing "I’ll Be Home for Christmas." The music made me weep.
It was almost midnight and still I could not sleep. I moved over to the window seat and looked out at the street. The icy moon seemed to light up the world.
A car turned the corner and came slowly down the street. It was a taxi, which stopped in front of my house. Curious, I leaned against the window. A tall figure emerged from the back. The driver came around the car and shook his hand. Suddenly, I knew.
Miraculously, I knew.
Forgetting my feet were bare, I ran down the stairs, out the front door and down the sidewalk, not even feeling the freezing concrete beneath my feet. He turned, opened his arms and picked me up. I was laughing and crying. He asked the cabbie, “Will you please bring my bag into the house? This lady has begun to go barefoot in freezing weather.”
Then he whispered to me, “I promised, remember?”
And the year we’d spent apart vanished like a fleck of foam.
—Dean Harding McGarity
Duncanville, Texas
Author Dean Harding McGarity with her husband, Steven, Christmas 1945I received a lovely note here at "Oh, By The Way" from Ms. McGarity on my original posting of her story and photo (here). Thank you Ms. McGarity, for sharing your touching story with us. If you liked this story, perhaps you would like her book COMFORT ME WITH APPLES, available from Amazon here.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
"Window" Wonderland!
Oh, how I remember these! My mom would get them out and put trees and snowflakes and Santas on our front windows that faced out to Main Street. It was a sweet, magical time of year...
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Harold Lloyd's Christmas Tree
Harold Lloyd was one of the most famous comedians of the silent film era, along with Chaplin and Keaton. And one of the highest paid. With his earnings, he built the magnificent 15-acre estate Greenacres in the Benedict Canyon area of Beverly Hills that consisted of a 44-room Italian-style mansion, nine-hole regulation golf course, outbuildings, one of the largest swimming pools (50' by 150') in southern California (that was also surrounded by a tunnel with underwater windows to view and photograph swimmers), and a 900-foot canoe run stocked with actual trout and bass. He even had a separate fairyland built for his four year old daughter Mildred Gloria. This fairyland had its own private gate with a sign reading, "Come into my garden and play," and included a four-room miniature old English house (complete with electricity and a kitchen and bath with running water), a miniature old English stable with a pony and cart, Great Dane dogs, and a wishing well with water for the garden.
Given his penchant for fantasy and over-the-top elements for his home, Lloyd apparently had an even bigger love for Christmas and every year, starting before Thanksgiving, he and his assistant would buy several pine trees, and lash them together to make one enormous tree at the end of the Orangerie (yes, the mansion even had an Orangerie...of course). Then the entire Lloyd family, which included his wife the silent film actress Mildred Davis, would spend the next many weeks, up to Christmas Eve, with hooks and ladders, decorating this behemoth, hanging and clustering the staggering amount of blown glass ornaments Lloyd collected most of his life. Sometime in the 1960s, Lloyd discovered fireproofing which perfectly preserved (including the pine scent!) his most recent--and last--tree-structure. From then on, the tree was left up year-round, to be enjoyed by all.
Lloyd died in 1971 and Greenacres was opened as a museum but closed in 1975. Sadly, the house and land were auctioned off and the tree was destroyed. But I want to know what happened to his ornament collection! I have seen some eBay sellers auctioning off what they purport to be ornaments from the Lloyd tree. Hmmm...
http://haroldlloyd.com/cms/index.php
More about the estate here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lloyd_Estate
Given his penchant for fantasy and over-the-top elements for his home, Lloyd apparently had an even bigger love for Christmas and every year, starting before Thanksgiving, he and his assistant would buy several pine trees, and lash them together to make one enormous tree at the end of the Orangerie (yes, the mansion even had an Orangerie...of course). Then the entire Lloyd family, which included his wife the silent film actress Mildred Davis, would spend the next many weeks, up to Christmas Eve, with hooks and ladders, decorating this behemoth, hanging and clustering the staggering amount of blown glass ornaments Lloyd collected most of his life. Sometime in the 1960s, Lloyd discovered fireproofing which perfectly preserved (including the pine scent!) his most recent--and last--tree-structure. From then on, the tree was left up year-round, to be enjoyed by all.
Lloyd died in 1971 and Greenacres was opened as a museum but closed in 1975. Sadly, the house and land were auctioned off and the tree was destroyed. But I want to know what happened to his ornament collection! I have seen some eBay sellers auctioning off what they purport to be ornaments from the Lloyd tree. Hmmm...
http://haroldlloyd.com/cms/index.php
More about the estate here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lloyd_Estate
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Cartoon Christmas
Still from "Lady and the Tramp"
Still from "Lady and the Tramp"
Still from "The Night Before Christmas"
Still from "The Night Before Christmas"
Friday, December 14, 2012
Thursday, December 13, 2012
BEAUTY: Art--Winter Images
Top to bottom: Silent Night by George Sotter; illustration by Louie Zong; Children Under The Christmas Tree by Robert Weise; illustration by Rudolf Koivu; Winter Evening by Theodor Kittelsen
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