Genea-Bloggers has what I think is a very good idea leading up to Christmas. A Christmas Advent outlining your memories of Christmas pasts. I will get us started with childhood memories of my own (even though these are going to definitely date me).
My father worked for the London Free Press, and in the 50’s the company was family owned. Walter J.Blackburn took a particular interest in his employees (the old if you work for me you are family attitude). One of the highlights of the year was the employee’s family Christmas party. Of course, for us children the fact that the presents were good ones might have coloured our attitude. It was a big event throughout the 50’s largely because there were so many of us. Sometimes I think that the attitude at that time was that if you did not have a minimum of 4 children you were not really trying.
There was candy, popcorn, ice cream, hotdogs, the company’s cartoonist “Merle Tingly” drew cartoons of each child.; and of course Santa appeared and gave each child a gift.
The company’s employee news sheet took pictures of the event, and the picture of me (yes there I am at age 5) appeared in the Christmas 1953 edition probably because at that time I was on crutches ( a picture of the child on crutches naturally got front page).
