Health & Fitness
Enjoying the Holiday Season Through the Lens
An Eldersburg photographer looks forward to Christmas and remembers years past.
Not sure why, but I am enjoying the Christmas season this year. It's not that I wasn't interested the past 40 years or so, but I couldn't get excited.
I tried the music and decorating over the years, but this year it is different. Maybe it's getting older and the memories coming back to my mind. I have taken an interest in the music this year, particularity from the 40's and 50's.
I have also watched a lot of holiday movies thanks to AMC and TCM. I watched one of my mother's favorite movies, "White Christmas" three times. I remember it was one of the first things we saw when we got our first color television.
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When I was shooting pictures of the holiday parade in Westminster I was thinking back to the annual treat in front of St. Johns School when it was on East Main Street, the lights hanging across the street, Santa's house at Locust Lane and the trains at Bobby's Hobby Lobby.
I also thought back to making sugar cookies with my grandmother in her apartment along Main Street. The picture of the little kid was taken in her apartment. The little kid is me when I was about three and yes, they had color film back then. That was the first year we had a train garden under the tree. That's also me with my Tonka trucks.
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The other images are of my parent's tree with the train garden in the late 1970s. The next image is a shot of our tree last year. The following images are Christmas in Westminster over the years. The inside of the church is St Johns Catholic Church, then a band playing around a tree around 1980, Santa arrives at the Westminster Shopping Center also around 1980 and the lights over Main Street in the mid-1970s.
I know I am getting older because it seemed like it snowed every year at Christmas, but I know that's not true as I remember a thunderstorm one year, which I think was 1966. When it did snow over the holidays we sled from Union Mills behind my cousin Kenny Dull's house with other kids like Dick Study and Dean Leppo into our front yard.
I can't wait to watch the granddaughters on Christmas morning as they still believe in the man in the red suit. For the second year in a row, they have gotten a kick out of the Elf on the Shelf. I hope they have fond memories of their own in 50 years.