It's that time of year when memories of Christmas past bring back a simpler time for many of us, a time when a trip to Woolworth's was one of the biggest thrills of the season. How did Woolworth's and Christmas become connected? Put on your Christmas sweater (you know you have one!) for this stroll and let's have some good old fashioned fun!
Woolworth's and Christmas
It all started with the decorations, before there were actual ornaments people put food like cookies and berries on the trees and even some paper handmade ornaments.
Prince Albert of England was actually a native to Germany. While on a journey to Germany he literally brought the tradition of glass blown ornaments back with him to England. From there the concept spread like wildfire. As time passed, the ornaments became more plentiful and more beautiful which as a result, increased their desirability. FW Woolworth was the first American retailer to sell glass ornaments. For those of you who can remember, Woolworth's was considered a dime store but Woolworth managed to make millions of dollars off of the ornament sales.
From the 1800's until around 1925, virtually all of the glass blown ornaments was still made in Lauscha, Germany. By 1935 these ornaments were being imported to the Unites States by the multi-millions. That ended after WWII as Lauscha became part of communist East Germany and the industry naturally declined. However, it did not take long for Japan and Czechoslovakia to decide to start producing these ornaments for the United States. These ornaments were very unique as they were smaller in size and hand painted. Originally when these ornaments were crafted they all symbolized something such as fruits and vegetables represented the harvest, birds were considered to be God's messengers and were known as a symbol of love, world peace, good luck, and good fortune. Ornaments in the shape of fish symbolized Christ and Christianity and star shaped ornaments represented the Star of Bethlehem.
Woolworth then decided to contact the Corning Company of Corning, New York. Corning had been making light bulbs out of ribbons of glass. Woolworth's intention was to persuade Corning to use his machine to manufacture glass ornaments assuring him that there was a steady market for them. Corning agreed and his glass machine still today sits in the Henry Ford Museum, located in Dearborn, Michigan. Corning's machine was putting out numbers of ornaments that well exceeded what was able to be made manually. As time passed, Corning was able to use various materials and colors to make an even greater assortment of beautiful ornaments. Corning's biggest customer was Max Eckhardt, owner of Shiny Brite. Eckhardt would buy the ornaments and lacquer them by machine where they were then decorated and resold.
During war time certain materials were very scarce and there was a time when the metal caps hat rest on top of the ornaments had to be replaced with cardboard and hung on the trees with yarn or ribbon. But as the war passed, so did the cardboard hangings. Long gone are those days and today's ornaments are elegant, beautiful, and come in more variety than can be counted. I love finding them in sort of non Christmas colors like pink of course! I also loved the flocked ones when I was a kid, they just felt so fancy!
Woolworth sold more than ornaments, you could find all your decorations and gifts all right there!
A few years ago I took a real visit back in time to The National Christmas Center in Lancaster Pennsylvania, and had the best surprise when I found they had recreated Woolworth's at Christmas
When you lovingly unwrap each of your ornaments this year maybe you will find one that came from Woolworth's!
Wishing each of you; trees that stand up straight, lights that work and ornaments that don't break!
Until 2011 - Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!
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