Christmas Ornaments of the Past
Every Time a Bell Rings
"Everytime a bell rings an angel gets its wings", many of us have heard that famous line from the movie " A Wonderful life" and for the baby boomer generation christmas always evolved around the christmas tree and christmas ornaments. F.W. Wooloworth , Kresge and Neisner;s as well as many others were able to sell these sparkling little ornaments from .5 cents to .20 cents. The special little ornament normally sold once a year was from Macy's or Gimble's department store. This was the era when mom and dad would have everyone put on there sunday best and pack the family in the car , drive downtown to see that carefully orchestrated and absolutely glistening and gleeming christmas tree which was lit up with lights and plenty of ornaments. Complexity and offering a variety of ornaments was the driving engine of ornament sells in that era.
Injection molding was used in place of simply blowing bubbles out of molten ribbon or even glass or plastic which allowed for the reflective indentations in totally round ornaments. Injection moldings also allowed the ornaments to come in different shapes which for tradtional glass blowers were unavailable. Intricate figures and entire nativity scenes could be created in plastic and encased in a pastel-tinted outershell. Movie stars real and animated were sold by the thousands.
Many families had mini villages that looked like something out of the book " A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. Sometimes the buildings were meant to be illimunated by Christmas lights that required some sort of clip arrangement to faciltitate the placement of the village.
There was elves and fuzzy little friends , cute snowmen and santa and his reindeer as cute was a trait for the 1950's. Perhaps it was the admiration of cuteness that led to the amazingly stark simplicity of the aluminum christmas tree. And so the era of cute ends and leaving cookies for santa , and watching the snowflakes fall as you lay burrowed beneath your blankets waiting for Santa to bring that new pony you were begging for all year or that shiny new bike with the bell.These are the memories of ornaments placed deep in box and opened on christmas once again in our dreams.
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