Christmas is a lot of things to a lot of people, but for almost everyone Christmas includes nostalgia and memories. Sometimes they’re very profound, and sometimes silly and trivial… but even those can be heart-gripping.
Not too many of us actually remember the one-horse open sleigh days, but even memories from “modern times” can seem like another world. For instance, back in the Baby Boom of the 1950s and 1950s…
*You might have gone shopping at M. Cohn & Sons on Liberty Street in Bath, where “Kaynee Pigskin Parade Coordinates rate a rousing cheer” for scoring “another fashion goal with the boys!” These Coordinates were “ivy-neat,” and indeed the young lad in the ad looks like he belongs at Princeton, with jacket, flat cap, and knife-cut creases on his slacks.
*You might find a Dacron blouse and tweed skirt for $12.98 at Mary Kirkland Shoppe in Painted Post, and you might hope that they made you look as elegant as the ecstatic lady in the ad.
*To get the most from your new blouse and skirt you might need Spirella Foundations, custom-made for each individual, measurements taken in the privacy of your home by Mrs. Bertha Crippen of Bath. If you don’t know what we’re talking about, don’t worry about it. You probably weren’t there anyway.
*You might be getting a new hi-fi phonograph from W. T. Grant (in Bath and elsewhere), with four speeds, two speakers, and a hefty price tag of $49.95 (but with convenient terms and no down payment).
*You might be heading out to shop A&P for Holiday Foods and a Wide Selection of Festive Money-Savers, including Butterball and Blue Ribbon oven-ready turkeys at 36 cents a pound.
*You (or your mother) might be playing the Acme Cross-Out Game, with 3500 prizes worth $35,000! Mrs. Doris Doloisio of Cortland and Mrs. Elizabeth Anderson of Canandaigua each won mink stoles!
*If you saved up a hundred dollars in your Christmas Club account, you could make your Christmas “the merriest ever!”
*You could be financing your Christmas shopping by saving Triple-S Blue Stamps from Grand Union (turkeys 39 cents a pound), or with S&H Green Stamps from Cohn’s.
*You might be hoping for a Western Flyer bicycle from Western Auto… maybe accessorized with a Cadet speedometer advertised in “Boys Life.”
*You might be enjoying “the light refreshment” of soda (In glass bottles! Made with cane sugar!) from Pepsi-Cola Elmira Bottling Co., Inc.
*You might be shopping at Rockwell’s in Corning, or at Iszard’s in Elmira, or at Agway almost anywhere.
*You might be arranging special gifts for the milkman and the paper boy.
*You might be haunting the newsstand for “Archie’s Christmas Stocking,” or for the annual Christmas issues of Uncle Scrooge, Dennis the Menace, or Sugar and Spike.
*You might have ordered “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens from the Arrow Book Club, and you might be sweating out a delivery before school lets out.
*You might be hoping to start vacation early with a snow day, and guarantee a white Christmas. What do YOU remember?