The first Christmas card of December

Now if like me you are old enough to remember those letters to the Times on hearing the first cuckoo of spring, here is another.

In this case it’s the first greetings card for Christmas.

A first in that  we are only just in to December and also because it is the earliest David has shown me from his collection.

It dates from December 1916 and although I know he has much older ones this is still a first for me.

Somewhere in the collection I have some Victorian ones and perhaps it’s time for them to see the light of day.

David tells me this one was also a a Valentine's mailing novelty card so a double first.

And that is it.

I shall   leave you with this one, and no I don’t feel that I have brought Christmas in too early given our local supermarket has had advent calendars for a month and the first TV advert for the season aired sometime ago.

All I will say is that David continues to amaze me with the extent of his collection of memorabilia from the two world wars along with that of postal history.

Still that’s it for now.

Picture; Christmas card 1916, from the collection of David Harrop 

A ladybird, a Christmas annual and an advert

We tend to think of advertising aimed at children as something new, but not so.

Here from the Swift comic annual, is a bit of science mixed up with a bit of advertising.

Pictures; from the Swift comic annual, 1958

Watching the Santa Clause parade in Kenora, Ontario, in 1953

This is Kenora in Onraio and I am watching the 1953 Santa Clause parade.

It is the second in a short series on Christmas before now.*

There is no plan to the series, no great message, just a love of old pictures and the hope that stories will flow.

So this is Kenora and my friend Susan is there in the crowd watching the parade.

Kenora, originally named Rat Portage, is a small city situated on the Lake of the Woods in Northwestern Ontario, Canada, close to the Manitoba boundary.**

It stands on the territory of the Ojibwe or Chippewa who are a large group of Native Americans and First Nations in North America.

There are Ojibwe communities in both Canada and the United States.

In Canada, they are the second-largest population among First Nations, surpassed only by the Cree. In the United States, they have the fourth-largest population among Native American tribes, surpassed only by the Navajo, Cherokee, and Lakota.***

The town of Rat Portage was amalgamated with the towns of Keewatin and Norman in 1905 to form the present-day City of Kenora. The name, "Kenora", was coined by combining the first two letters of Keewatin, Norman and Rat Portage.

And in the December of 1955 Susan and her family were there as the parade rumbled past, and over and above Christmas there is another connection because Susan was prompted to send me the picture after reading about the petrol station that had been a cinema.****

It was one of those old fashioned ones with the now iconic petrol pumps and it led Susan to reflect to  “love coincidences...or, perhaps, synchronicity. I have not seen a photo with a BP sign in it for several years.

Now, within 2 days, I have seen two pictures: one here, Andrew, and one in a photo of the 1955 Santa Claus parade in my home town.

My parents used to use BP all the time when we were young. 

In fact, we took out little blue 'Hillman' car there quite frequently! 

Our surname was Hillman (originally from Wlitshire in England pre 1840) and I always thought it quite appropriate that our very first vehicle was named after us!”

But like all good memories Susan came back with a correction, “it was the 1953 Santa Claus parade...and it's a B/A sign.”

So there you have it, yesterday I posted of festive preparations in Varese in Italy, earlier in the week it was a postcard from 1916 and today a Santa Clause parade from the 1950s.

Picture; the Santa Clause Parade, Kenora, 1953, from the collection of Susan Susan [Hillman] Brazeau

*Christmas Past, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Christmas%20Past

** Kenora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenora

***Ojibwe, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe

****Chorlton’s first cinema, a Molotov cocktail and a shed load of new stories, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/chorltons-first-cinema-molotov-cocktail.html

With the Christmas markets on a bright sunny afternoon in Varese

Today it was one of those perfect December days in Varese.

The sun shone and despite the bitter cold and the hint of snow on the mountains above the city the first Friday of December was a busy one.

Not that it could be anything else as people went about proper Christmas shopping given that we are now just weeks away from the festival.

And like pretty much everywhere the Christmas markets were offering up a mix of food,and  interesting presents and even if they were what you could get all the year round there was something special about what they were selling this afternoon.

But there were the odd quirky things to see like the purple bike with its display and the lights suspended over the Piazza which as dusk fell came into their own.

I have never been able to resist that mix of seasonal commercialism and the Christmas lights which go back to being just six and visiting the lights on Oxford Street.

It marked the official beginning of all that was to come.

Uncle George would have arrived the day before and in the late afternoon we would take the train up to town and the rest was just magic.

It was not just the lights it was also the bag of hot chestnuts which burnt your fingers but were wonderful to eat under the sparkly stars and angels.

And of course even as you headed home  you knew  that this was just the prelude to what was to come.

So I suppose that was the motive to do exactly the same with my lads as they were growing up.

Having said all that I have yet to venture in to Manchester and will own up to having been left in Chorlton while some of the family have gone out for a pre- Christmas get together in Varese..

Pictures; Varese, December 2015 from the collection of T. Balzano

Tomorrow, Christmas in Canada in 1953