Old Fashioned Christmas

It's easy to add a touch of old fashioned decoration with a Balsam Fir Wreath. This double-faced wreath is decorated with cones and berries.

This handcrafted wreath comes to you with the full fragrance of real balsam fir. Great for home or office, indoor or outdoor decorating.




Some Old Fashioned Ribbon Candy Christmas Ornaments can help give a retro look to your Christmas tree.

Each set comes with six ornaments designed to look like two different varieties of old fashioned ribbon candy. Three of the ornaments are red with white stripes and three are pink with white stripes.

Each plastic Ornament comes ready to hang on a clear cord.




These Christmas Bubble Lights may not be exactly like the ones introduced in the 1940's, but they remind me of ones I would see ever so often when I was a child.

They were rare, and going out of style back then, but I always liked them better than regular Christmas bulb lights used at the time. There was just something magical about seeing the lights bubbling away on the branches.

These modern day bubble lights come pretty close to recreating that magic!




Shatterproof decorations like this Red Glitter Drape Ornament look like the delicate glass bulbs of old. All the beauty without the danger of broken glass shards should someone drop one, or it falls off the branch.

If you are like me, you also have memories of having to clean up after a fragile treasure hit the floor, but thanks to these modern day equivalents from Barcana, you can build new memories without the disappointment.

To help set ourselves in the mood of an old fashioned Christmas, we might read Christmas stories like those found in A Treasury of Old-Fashioned Christmas Stories, or dig even deeper into the History, Legends & Folklore Of Christmas to learn more about common traditions a find out why we do what we do to celebrate Christmas.

The colors, the music even the food are important, this book even includes recipes for many traditional foods popular during the Christmas season.

We could learn more about Christmas trees, and other plants used for decorations during the holidays, such as mistletoe, holly and ivy. What is wassailing, why do we hang stockings, and other traditions are explored along with tips and ideas for gifts.

One of the most popular stories of Christmas, besides the Bible, is Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and the 1951 movie starring Alastair Sim, originally released as Scrooge, is perhaps the most familiar film version of the story. I've seen it more times than I can remember!

The film expands on the story by detailing Scrooge's rise as a prominent businessman who was corrupted by a greedy new mentor that had lured him away from the benevolent Mr. Fezziwig. When that new mentor, who does not appear at all in Dickens's original story, is discovered to be an embezzler, the opportunistic Scrooge and Marley offer to compensate the company's losses on the condition that they receive control of the company, giving birth to Scrooge and Marley.

A Christmas Carol (Ultimate Collector's Edition) includes audio commentary by Marcus Hearn and George Cole, a short bio of George Mintner, the film's executive producer, a mini-bio of Dickens, the colorized version of the film, cast bios, original trailers, and an optional narration for the blind.

I saw the movie so many times as a child that when I finally did get around to reading the actual novel, Alastair Sim was the face of Scrooge in my mind as I read.

My favorite version of the story is the 1984 version starring George C. Scott. "A new powerful presentation of the most loved ghost story of all time!"

This version pulls us into a richly painted world, and brings new life to the story. Scott, one of my all time favorite actors, received an Emmy nomination (one of the eight Emmy nominations in his career) for his performance in this movie, and director Clive Donner had been an editor on the famous 1951 Scrooge movie.

It remains one of the most beloved adaptations of A Christmas Carol and with a 100 minute running time, it is one of the longest film versions, even though it is a made for TV movie.

Other notable actors in this version include Frank Finlay, Angela Pleasence (Donald Pleasence's daughter), Edward Woodward, Michael Carter, David Warner, Susannah York, Roger Rees, Nigel Davenport and Liz Smith.

In 1999, after many years of performing his one man version of A Christmas Carol in which he portrayed all 40-plus characters himself, Patrick Stewart (Captain Pichard of Star Trek: TNG and Professor X in the X-Men films) starred as Scrooge for a new film version of the story with updated special effects not available for previous versions.

Still, as good as the effects are, it is the powerful performance of Stewart and the other actors, such as Richard E. Grant, Joel Grey, Ian McNeice, Dominic West, Trevor Peacock and Liz Smith (she plays the role of Mrs. Dilber in this film, the same role she played in the 1984 version), which makes this another "Must See" retelling of A Christmas Carol!