A CHRISTMAS TREE

Old Trunks is looking at a picture of a group of people looking in awe at a Christmas tree in 1912.

There are fourteen people in the picture and none of them are tots. That surprises me because the toys under the tree are for kids. Little puppies and little dishes as well as a book with Scrooge across the front. There are also several pictures of people, unwrapped in ornate frames. Oh! I see a xylophone! There are cloth bags hanging on the tree.

The decorations are strings of popcorn and berries. Let me try to explain another decoration: Do you remember making May baskets by rolling paper to be shaped like an ice cream cone? Those are plentiful on the tall tree which brushes a twelve foot ceiling. Another decoration is those honey comb bells, which as we all know, don't fair well from year to year.

Perhaps these people are enthralled because the lit candles are glowing. Maybe they all have a section they are to watch in case of fire!

Most of the women are dressed in high collar dresses with there hair in an upsweep. All the men are dressed in suits with high collars. All the men's hair from this angle of the picture are sheared above their ears. Of the two younger men, one wears a loosely tied tie, he is wearing knickers, heavy socks and work like boots. Beyond the setting of the tree is a bed with a picture of a women and a small child in an oval frame as well as a picture of a flower in a square frame.

If you have pictures of your family around a tree, what is there? What can you imagine. I am in a funk that the kids that will get the toys aren't in the room to see what the tree looks like! Perhaps this was the era when the tree was put up on Christmas eve while the children had visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads!

Joy to all that enter in.

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