Family Circle Magazine December 1956

 Here is the Family Circle magazine from December 1956. It has a very nice Christmas story by Pearl S. Buck and visualized by Walt Disney and staff.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Ronn's Big Pile of Stuff blog. Our family spent Christmas at the Happiest Place on Earth. I found this super cool retro Christmas living room at the Disneyland Hotel. Wish I could have brought the whole thing home with us. Monkey and Penguin helped themselves to some of Santa's goodies while we were taking photos.

My Elvis' Christmas Album

This Christmas I decided to find my first two childhood Christmas albums. I knew the first was Elvis' Christmas Album from 1970. I could not remember much about the second one except that it had a red cover and was perhaps mostly instrumental Christmas music. These were the only two Christmas albums I had has a kid, so they got played over and over ever Christmas for years. I found them in my mothers small record collection, which she had not touched in years. I asked if I could have them, and pointed out that my name was even written on the front cover of the Elvis album. She happily handed them over knowing they would get a prized place in my record collection.
On Christmas Eve, I poured a Coca Cola into a Coca Cola Christmas glass, turned on the "fire log" channel on my TV and put the Elvis' Christmas Album on my USB turntable which is hooked up to a grape iMac. I was instantly transported back to my childhood as the first song, "Blue Christmas" began.
Although I am not an Elvis fan, I enjoyed the album greatly, until the very last song on side two which I though didn't seem to fit the Christmas album theme. I then noticed that on the front cover of the album it lists all the songs, and then in a box at the bottom it says By Request "Mama Liked the Roses". I guess they could not come up with a full albums worth of Elvis Christmas songs, and needed one more song? I wonder who requested it?
This album has always been the Christmas soundtrack in my head, and now I can play it every year for the foreseeable future.

Merry Pink Christmas

Merry Christmas! We had a wonderful Christmas morning and now that the waffles have been eaten and the presents have been opened, I have retired to my office to surf the net while the Christmas dinner is prepared for tonight.  I found this comic in a pile of comics by my computer earlier, and thought I would share it today. This is the cover to the 1979 Pink Panther comic book, issue #60. This issue features the Pink Panther TV special, Pink Christmas, which I happened to catch on TV this Christmas. Being a big fan of the Pink Panther, I tuned in to watch the special, but unfortunately, it wasn't up to the level of the Charlie Brown Christmas or the Grinch, both of which are on my 'must watch' list each Christmas season.

Bill Peet's Countdown To Christmas

If you have been reading my blog for any amount of time, you may remember that I am a big Bill Peet fan. I started collecting his books long before there was an internet, and back before Amazon and eBay, you had to go to your local book store to have them look stuff up for you. Once I had access to the internet, I started buying the Bill Peet books I was missing from my collection. I am not sure how I had totally missed this particular title, but I happened to see the cover of this book on line and I realized immediately that it was by Bill Peet, and that I didn't already own it. A quick visit to eBay and I had a copy of Countdown To Christmas in my hands a few weeks later. My copy comes from the Virginia Beach Public Library System, Kempsville Area Library. The book is from 1972 and is written and illustrated by Bill Peet. It was very enjoyable to have a Bill Peet book to read that was completely new to me. I had read all of his other books so many times as a kid, that this one was unexpected treat.

A Snow White Christmas Miracle...

Ok, so its not a Christmas miracle, but it is a neat Christmas coincidence.  Two weeks ago for Little Golden Book Monday #134, I posted the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs book, and mentioned how my father in law had seen Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the theater during its original release back in 1937. Today, I have another Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs post, again coming from my father in law. This time it is a cool Seven Dwarfs Christmas diorama display that had been on display at the Woodwards department store in Abbotsford for many a Christmas. My father in law received it once it was retired from the store 20 or so years ago, and he went to to display in his home each Christmas after that. This Christmas he passed it onto my wife, and it is now on display in our living room complete with blinking lights.

Little Golden Book Monday #136

Today, being the last Monday before Christmas, I thought I would bring you 3 Christmas themed Little Golden Books, Two stories based on Rudolph and another with reindeer on the cover.
First up is The Night Before Christmas from 2001. Next up is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer from 1985 (original printing 1958). And lastly we have Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer Shines Again from 1982. All three books were purchased today at a thrift shop for 50 cents each.

I also thought it would be fun to show the back covers of all three in random order. You can have fun trying to figure out which back cover goes with each book!

Weihnachten in den Bergen

I picked up this 1978 children's book last summer and put it aside for closer to Christmas, which is now! The book is not in English, so I had no idea what it was called, but I really loved the cover artwork. A quick Google search and I found out that Weihnachten is the German observance of what is commonly known in English as Christmas Day. I love that the front cover shows six children in a horse drawn sleigh on their way to some really fun Weihnachten type event, and then on the back cover, we see them on their way back home a little while latter. We know that just an hour or so has passed by the movement of the moon across the sky.

Little Golden Book Monday #135

Today's Little Golden Book is The Cat That Climbed The Christmas Tree. The book is from 1992, written by Susane Santoro Whayne and illustrated by Christopher Santoro. The story is about Benny the cat's first Christmas. Benny is fascinated by all the Christmas decorations, especially the angel on the highest branch of the Christmas tree. "Up Benny climbed, past silver flutes and tiny drums. Miniature skaters called to one another, and old-fashioned clothespin ladies gossiped on their boughs..." Now if we all remember back to Little Golden Book Monday #131, we learned all about boughs ;-)

A Family Circle Christmas

I picked up this great old Family Circle magazine at a recent library book sale for 10 cents. Most of the magazines I picked up that day were recent magazines which I bought specifically to pull adds out of for my collection, but this December 1968 issue of Family Circle has been put into a magazine bag with a backing board and is now part of my Christmas decorations for this year. Its also in the bag to conceal the funky old magazine smell!

Cricket Records Winter Wonderland

Now that it is December I can start getting into the Christmas spirit. Anytime before December is just too dang early to be listening to Christmas songs or seeing those pesky Christmas television commercials. So to kick thing off, I have dug out a few of the great Christmas records I have picked up over the past few months. First off is the great looking Cricket Records 45 RPM record of Winter Wonderland. I love the cover artwork.
While working in my office tonight I have turned on my Ion TTUSB10 USB Turntable to listen to a bunch of my Christmas vinyl. There is something so comforting in all those clicks and pops while listening to your old favorites. I have to admit though that listening to 45 records with one song per side seems like way too much work now. At least with an LP I can put it on and don't have to reach over to flip it over for 10 to 20 minutes. Three minutes per side just seems crazy now in the age of iPods full of hundreds of hours of continuous music. And yet, here I am reaching over to flip this one over to hear "The Sounds of Christmas" by Warren Vincent & Orchestra with The Cricketones. Silly me.

Reason for the Season

Here is the cover of Stryper's "Reason for the Season" EP from Enigma Records, 1984. On it you will find the long and short version of the title track along with what is perhaps my favorite Christmas song ever, Stryper's rockin' version of "Winter Wonderland"!

You can check it out with the youtube video below.

Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

Peter Pan Records - Frosty the Snowman

Here is a 45 RPM Extended Play record I found last month. Today I was going to listen to it and I found that the record inside the sleeve was not the correct one. It was instead, a Disneyland Record of Frosty the Snowman, so although it is not the actual correct record, it is at least the correct song. Too bad though, as I was really looking forward to listening to Morris, the Moose.

Coca Cola 2009 Christmas Bottles

I found these cool Coca Cola Christmas bottles at my local Walmart recently. There are two different (plastic) bottles which both look like round Christmas tree ornaments. One has Santa drinking a Coke and the other has a mother and baby polar bear also drinking a Coke. They look pretty small, but are actually 400 ml, making them slightly bigger than a traditional Coca Cola can. People were snapping these up like crazy, and I heard a few of them talking about giving them to family members etc as stocking stuffers. They have certainly made a great addition to my Coke collection.

Little Golden Book Monday #110

I forgot to post last Monday, so I missed the perfect chance to do the 12 Little Golden Books of Christmas on Monday when there was exactly 12 days till Christmas. So instead, since there are 5 days till Christmas, I present to you, The 5 Golden Books of Christmas!

On the Eighth day of Christmas my true love read to me... Santa's Surprise Book from 1966
On the Ninth day of Christmas my true love read to me... Frosty the Snowman from 1950
On the Tenth day of Christmas my true love read to me... Big Bird's Ticklish Christmas from 1997
On the Eleventh day of Christmas my true love read to me... Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: Oh, Nose! from 2001
On the Twelfth day of Christmas my true love read to me... The Night Before Christmas from 1949

The 12 Little Golden Books of Christmas

I missed Little Golden Book Monday by two days... It's now Christmas Eve, so I thought I would make up for it by posting the 12 Little Golden Books of Christmas.

On the First day of Christmas my true love read to me... Frosty the Snowman from 2001


On the Second day of Christmas my true love read to me... Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer from 1998


On the Third day of Christmas my true love read to me... Ho-Ho-Ho Baby Fozzie! from 1997



On the Fourth day or Christmas my true love read to me... I Can't Wait Until Christmas from 1989


On the Fifth day of Christmas my true love read to me... Noel from 1991


On the Sixth day of Christmas my true love read to me... Jingle Bells from 1998


On the Seventh day or Christmas my true love read to me... Big Bird Meets Santa Claus from 1997


On the Eight day or Christmas my true love read to me... Tom & Jerry's Merry Christmas from 1954


On the Ninth day or Christmas my true love read to me... Mickey's Christmas Carol from 1997


On the Tenth day or Christmas my true love read to me... Frosty from 1969


On the Eleventh day or Christmas my true love read to me... Donald Duck's Christmas Tree from 1993


And on the Twelfth day or Christmas my true love read to me... Santa's Toy Shop originally from 1950