Christmas Joys of Days Past...

Christmas Joys! On Christmas Eve, the little ones can hardly sleep!  Their thoughts are only what will they will find beneath the Christmas Tree come early morn!  Oh, what wonders dear old Santa brings during the night!  He always comes through with the most beautiful and delightfully entertaining toys for all of the little ones.  He and those remarkably agile reindeer fly through the night from rooftop to rooftop all the while not waking a single soul!  That is one amazing old elf!  His ability to know just what each child wants is truly an art!  Perhaps all of those letters he receives gives him an inkling but if you ever get a chance to read any of those, you might just wonder how he is not a tad confused.  I do believe it must have been a heap easier back in the day when Little Jane asked for a dolly and Little Bobby only wanted a toy train.  (Now with things needing to be "politically correct", those requests would not be heard at all!)  Today with all of the electronic gadgets on the market, poor old Santa might better stick to gift certificates to the local store!

The decorations in the Little Bayou House this year are a different than most previous years.  I am going more rustic and in the dining room I have pulled into use all of the antique toys that I have collected over the years.  (Yes, some of these "antique" toys are ones that I played with as a child as much as I hate to admit it!  That might just mean that I am an antique as well!)  These toys are interspersed with the decorations and actually look quite nice except for the fact that some look a mite creepy or even downright dangerous!  Take dolls, for instance!  Some of them have the most "ghostly" look about them!  Their eyes are set back in deep sockets which are darkened with painted shadows!  Their hair, though matted now, was most of the time real, human hair..that, in itself, is sort of creepy!  These dolls were considered lovely back in the day...I still think they are,,,just in a sort of scary way!  Personally, I prefer ragdolls over the plastic things of today even with their painted faces OR...button eyes!

I have a Jack-in-the-Box that is supposed to be a clown.  Ok...so I believe this might be where clowns got the bad rap of sometimes being scary!  This little guy reminds me more of an imp than a clown!  He has the most mischievous look on his face!  Although his clothing is stained with age and his box is getting dilapidated, his facial expression says it all!  Old Jack might just get up and mess up a room while a child is sleeping!  Think of all the trouble an impish Jack-in-the-Box might cause for some poor unsuspecting toddler!  "Mommy, I promise that I did not break all of my crayons!"  Yep...Old Jack's handiwork!

Then there were the sewing machines meant for five year old girls!  I had one...my sister had one!  Since I was the younger, mine was actually BATTERY-OPERATED!   Hers had to be turned by hand but five years later when I received mine, progress had been made in the toy workshop!  The elves smartened up and created batteries and that set things ahead by strides!  Nowadays, these same sewing machines would never make it on the toy store shelves because they used real sewing machine needles!  The horrors!  As much as folks would complain now and even sue the company for making such a thing, I never remember getting hurt by using my machine!  Susan and I would sew all sorts of doll clothes (politically incorrect again!) using our machines and old flour sacks.  To us, they were beautiful!

Gone are the days of ragdolls, Jack-in-the-Boxes, trucks, trains, sewing machines, little red wagons, bats and balls.  The Christmas Joys of today are not that simple.  Life is not that simple.  I must admit, though, when our kids were small, this is the type toys that old Santa brought to them......and they were happy.  And I must admit that I hope to do the same for my future grandchildren.  Perhaps things can be simple again for a little while.