Christmas Past

Are you old enough to remember stickers like these? They're from a Christmas past, but not too long past. Maybe 50 or 60 years past.

I found these at a local recycle center and brought them home because they reminded me so much of stickers that were available when I was a child. These also came home with me because I didn't want them to disappear into a trash bin!

They are the lick-and-stick kind. I haven't licked any of them but they probably taste awful, like most lick-and-stick stuff of years past. There were two different sets and each set had two sheets. Unfortunately, the sheets in each set were stuck together. I scanned them, then soaked and separated them. You see only one set here. I haven't yet soaked the other set.

I have to admit that I love - have always loved - paper, and magazines, and photographs. In a word, ephemera. Generally, if it's paper, I like it. All the better if it has colors on it.

My love of paper caused some trouble one Christmas many years ago. Perhaps I was a difficult and challenging child, stubborn and strong-willed. (They are different, you know.) That year I was probably only 4 or 5 and not yet in school. I clipped newspaper "articles" just like I'd seen my mother do. I couldn't read but I could certainly cut on the lines. And cut I did! I cut lots and lots of "articles." So many, in fact, that my mother became upset with me. They overflowed the drawers of a small child's cupboard that sat in our kitchen. Yet I wouldn't part with the articles. My mother asked my brother, Bob, to persuade me to throw them away. I don't remember if there was a trade-off, a bargaining chip, but if there was, it was probably that Santa wouldn't visit me if I didn't do what my mom asked and get rid of them. Santa's pretty important when you're 4 or 5, so out they went, and peace was restored.

Isn't it strange the things we remember? Sometimes it's the very little things that stay with us. Do you have a Christmas memory of a small thing like that?

Times were simpler, I think, during the years when Christmas stickers like these were made and used. Sometimes I wish I could turn the clock back to those times. Not to be a child again, but to have the simplicity.

I wish you a Happy Christmas.