Retro Christmas Relics Boomers Will Recognize Instantly (35 Pics)
There’s this thing that happens when you get older where Christmas stops feeling like magic and starts feeling like logistics.
Nobody tells you that’s coming, but it happens to everyone. You go from losing your mind over a Sears Wishbook to wondering if you kept the receipt for something you bought three weeks ago. That’s just adulthood, I guess.
But sometimes you see an old photo of bubble lights or those weird strawberry things people stuck on trees, and for like five seconds, you remember what it felt like before Christmas became a to-do list.
These photos are the boomer version of that—all the decorations and traditions that made Christmas feel like an actual event instead of something you survive.
1. The Sears Wishbook catalog that showed up in the mail every year, where you’d flip through pages and circle everything you wanted Santa to bring:
2. Those thin glass ornaments that seemed like they’d shatter if you breathed on them wrong:
3. Sparkly foam strawberries your family hung on the tree or wove into garland:
4. Bubble lights on the Christmas tree that looked beautiful but would absolutely scorch your finger if you touched one after it’d been plugged in for half an hour:
5. That waxy plastic holly garland with sharp edges that could practically slice your hand open:
6. Your parents setting out a bowl of mixed nuts with a nutcracker for guests…
7. …and Santa ashtrays left out on the coffee table like it was totally normal:
8. Covering every inch of the Christmas tree in silvery tinsel:
9. Or stringing popcorn by hand to wrap around the branches…
10. …and hanging gingerbread cookies as ornaments:
11. Building gingerbread houses from scratch and sneaking spoonfuls of icing the entire time:
12. Making little gumdrop snowmen and candy decorations to stick all over your gingerbread house:
13. A tin of ribbon candy your parents kept out for company that you’d sneak pieces from when nobody was looking:
14. Brach’s Chocolate Covered Cherries, which felt like the most sophisticated candy in existence:
15. Fake cardboard fireplaces that people without real ones would set up in their living room:
16. Every house on the block lit up with those plastic blow mold decorations glowing from the yard:
17. Or plywood cutout scenes that were usually handmade and painted:
18. Bringing toys to school for the holiday toy drive:
19. Piling into the car with your family to watch the town Christmas parade:
20. And driving around at night to see all the neighborhood Christmas lights and lawn decorations:
21. Party trays that looked exactly like this, loaded with deviled eggs, little smokies, cream cheese celery sticks, grape jelly meatballs, and cheese cubes stuck on pineapple chunks:
22. Your parents breaking out the good punch bowl filled with hot spiced punch or something fizzy made with 7-Up:
23. Cool Whip dolloped on top of every single piece of pie:
24. Those Avon bath toys shaped like Santa and reindeer that you begged your parents to buy:
25. An Advent calendar hanging in the kitchen where you’d cross off each day leading up to Christmas:
26. White flocked trees that made everyone assume you had money:
27. Aluminum trees that took forever to assemble but looked like something out of The Jetsons:
28. The spinning color wheel that lit up aluminum trees in rotating shades of red, green, blue, and orange:
29. Those bendable knee-hugger elves that seemed to be in every single house:
30. Creepy spinning angel figurines that glowed or rotated on their little stands:
31. Paper snowflakes you cut out by hand and taped to the windows:
32. …and your parents hanging that red plastic wreath with the electric candle in the front window:
33.
34. Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol, which had songs like “It’s Great to Be Back on Broadway” and “We’re Despicable” stuck in your head for weeks:
35. A Charlie Brown Christmas, brought to you by Coca-Cola and Dolly Madison, complete with their commercials baked right into the show:
