Christmas Eve 45 years ago in 1969!

The other day I found an image someone had put online from a page of the Simpson Sears Christmas catalogue from 1969. The doll above, "B" and $6.98 was the one I got for Christmas that year. Here I am holding her. We loved getting dolls for Christmas! Each year brought a new doll until we outgrew them. Aren't we cute?

We always opened our gifts on Christmas Eve which is a German tradition.

Right after supper at 5:30 pm we would scurry and get changed into a pretty dress.

Our Christmas tree was real, and was bought from Simpson Sears in Burnaby BC for the grand sum of $2.00 - $4.00. We loved our tree! We helped decorate it, and Mom hung the tinsel while we were at school. Dad put on the lights. The Santa Claus in the middle of the tree was a gift given to me in 1960 when I was a baby, and was always put in the middle each year.

The grand mess of the Christmas wrappings! My parents would carefully fold up all the paper and reuse it the next Christmas. Anything that was too badly torn was burned in the fireplace. 

This is a snippet from the above picture, showing Leona playing with her new doll, and myself playing with a neat Barbie sized grocery play set which had small sized food and a scale etc.

Leona got the little lantern that's on the coffee table, which ran on a battery. Later that night, she crept out of bed, went and got her full bulging stocking from the mantle, brought it back to bed, TURNED ON THE LIGHT, and opened her stocking! She was 7 years old. She woke me up of course, and proceeded to describe all the items in her stocking. I crawled under my covers and plugged my ears as we both got identical presents in our stockings. Then she put everything back and took her stocking back to the living room. I've never forgotten it! One of the items was a cute Winnie the Pooh cookie tin from England, filled with delicious little biscuits.

I have many fond memories of Christmas!

By Loretta Houben