A Collection of the Best Christmas Holiday Resources
Vintagexmas.com sells antique ornaments and has a good article on spotting fake reproductions when buying antique ornaments. The article covers reputation of the dealer, condition of the ornaments and specific popular antique ornaments that have fake reproductions out in the market.
Spotting Fake Christmas Ornament Reproductions
Family Christmas Online has a section on nativities including history information and photos of styles of nativities from years ago. There is some interesting history about how families collected their nativity sets in the U.S. years ago piece by piece before nativity sets were created.
Nativity History and Information
This site has a list of close up photos of vintage Christmas ornaments to view. There are beautiful photos of vintage cotton, glass, Dresden, Heubach/Bisque-Face, and Sebnitz Christmas ornaments. Some of the glass and metal based ornaments are really amazing, check out their photo galleries.
Vintage Christmas Ornaments Photo Gallery
Family Christmas Online has historical information about decorating Christmas trees. Learn about the history of Christmas decorations, how decorations for the Christmas tree from other countries influenced American Christmas decorations, when the Christmas decoration industry started and more.
History Christmas Tree Decorations
This About.com article goes into the history of Santa Claus and how our current version of Santa Claus came to be. There is also information about items that may be considered Santa collectibles of interest to collectors.
Santa History and Christmas Collectibles
Bill’s Antique Christmas Lights Museum has historical information on Christmas lights, from how Christmas lights originated to light sets from 1900 to the 1950’s, complete with cool photos of light sets and their original containers. Click on the thumbnail photos and you can get a look at the antique light sets up close.
Bill’s Antique Christmas [...]
WishbookWeb.com has a list of vintage Christmas catalogs you can look through online. Vintage Christmas catalogs include Speigel 1933, Sears 1943, JC Penny 1966, FAO Schwartz 1967 and many more catalogs. Take a step back into products that are priced low and memories of vintage catalog items you may have grown up with.
WishbookWeb.com Vintage Christmas [...]
For you history buffs this page has detailed historical information about the origins of Christmas including the nativity, customs, Saint Nick, Christmas trees, tree decorations, Christmas plants, traditional Christmas foods, Christmas carols and Christmas cards. There are some wonderful ancient Christmas pictures in this article as well.
American Christmas Origins
If you are old enough you may remember the dimestore Christmas villages made out of cardboard displayed during the holidays. This site provides a history of these dimestore Christmas village houses with original pictures of the village houses, catalog pages and historical information:
Papa Ted’s Place
If you are interested in photos and history of Christmas lights this museum site is for you. Lots of in depth information from the early days of pre-electricity decorations to electric Christmas lights and how these decorations have changed over the years:
The Antique Christmas Lights Site
