Collectors must crave moments of nostalgia

Glen Hancock

Christmas has already fallen into the history of 2006, but among the older folks who may not be seeing many more yuletide celebrations, some recollections of the festive season linger on.

In days gone by it was the practice in Valley towns for families to visit their friends sometime during the Christmas season; just to drop in with a modest gift – a plum pudding or a jar of quince marmalade made from fruit grown in the backyard – or to admire the Christmas tree and enjoy a cup of hot apple cider.

Over the years, the practice of visitation died off and salutations were reduced to Christmas cards, often to the people who lived next door. And now such greetings are transmitted by e-mail. However, this year (or the one just past) I accepted gracious invitations to share festivities with good friends, as it was only once a year.

There may still be partridges in pear trees, but everything else is different. There is still lots of tinsel, but it pales beside the fascination of Christmas lights, talking dolls, cell phones and digital cameras. E-mail messages from absent relatives and friends from far away places come and go on electronic equipment that is as commonplace in the average home as ice boxes and gramophones were in the days of my youth.

Phelma and John Brown kindly invited me to have morning coffee and hors d’oeuvres with them in their new condominium. I think it was the first time I was on the inside of a modern condominium (a term derived from the joint sovereignty of two or more nations, but unheard of commonly until after the war).

The rooms are enormous, multiple bathrooms, rooms for leisure, and a kitchen my grandmother would have killed for. Exquisite furniture and collected things are positioned tastefully in just the right places, much of it old stuff looking new.

I was amazed at the contrast between this new kind of living space and my own home, which doesn’t seem to have changed much in decades.

In the Depression years, many people didn’t have enough of what was needed and when they did have enough they seemed to have no interest in enhancing what they had by further acquisition. Few people in the Valley area 80 or 90 years ago had any interest in emulating the grandeur of Boston’s Beacon Hill or London’s Eton Square.

It is often assumed that nice furniture and associated accouterments are antiques. I presume that much of Thelma and John’s possessions are antiques, collected over the years because they liked them.

I have never collected things – except books, perhaps – and I spent five years in the service during the war and never brought anything back with me as a souvenir, except for a point 50 machine gun shell that someone in the armament division had made into a cigarette lighter.

In my basement we still have the refrigerator we bought 50 years ago. It still works, although it was succeeded by a dozen later models that didn’t work for long. But we don’t have any stuffed birds or Egyptian urns or Oriental rugs. The only things in my home that could dignify the term ‘antique’ are a parlour table that has always been used as a plant stand, and a piece of mahogany furniture that I bought from a junk shop for $5.

Some of my clothes are antiques. I have suits I haven’t worn for 30 years. And hats that are older than that. And, of course, I have ties. I keep the narrow ones until wide styles come back. They were once traditional Christmas gifts. Haberdashers try to change the styles of men’s clothing from time to time, but they can’t cajole men into responding.

My ice skates hang on a nail in the basement, never to be used again, but I notice them now and then and remember the great times we used to have at skating parties under the stars.

I have always been a scrapbooker. Some of them might be of interest to a museum or the archives. Sometimes I browse through them and enjoy those moments of nostalgia. But I realize that I pasted all those clippings and snapshots into those books for my own enjoyment. It doesn’t matter what happens to them now.