The Christmas TimesTM, the Official E-Mail Newsletter of Family Christmas OnlineTM and Affiliated Sites
This newsletter is for people who like celebrating holidays, especially Christmas. It is produced in conjunction with the following web sites.
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In this Issue
Welcome to the November, 2011 issue of The Christmas TimesTM. In this Issue
2011 has been year of transitions for many of our readers and contributors, but we're counting on a little Christmas cheer to keep us going through the end of the year. In the meantime, we've been getting a lot of interest in our Christmas sites, including folks who are grateful we were able to reconstruct George Nelson's Christmas tree light museum pages in OldChristmasTreeLights.com. We are pleased to announce important recent additions to that archive in this newsletter.
In the meantime, we've started yet another Christmas-themed web page you may find interesting. CardboardChristmas.com started out as a sort of index to many of the great, but hard to find Internet resources about vintage cardboard Christmas houses, called "putz" houses by their collectors. Our discussion forum and list of available resources has already grown dramatically since we went "live" just a few weeks ago. Stay tuned for further announcements on that score, as well.
We also have more stories and articles in the works for our FamilyChristmasOnline.com pages.
In addition, we've been working behind the scenes to keep up with trends and to answer letters from readers. And new readers keep signing up. And those letters often give us ideas for more articles . . . .
If, like many of our readers, you're still waiting for the "recovery" to do you and your family some good, please accept our prayers and best wishes for a much better 2012.
Finally, please accept our warm wishes for a great holiday season. And please especially enjoy any time you can spend with your family in these precious days.
Paul and Shelia Race
Topics discussed in this update include:
 New Site for Cardboard Christmas Houses - Through our friendship with Howard Lamey (of LittleGlitterhouses.com), we've gotten to know many great collectors, restorers, and builders of traditional cardboard Christmas houses and related vintage structures. We've also come to realize that many of the best resources for supporting this hobby are pretty hard to find. So with the help of a small circle of indoor railroaders, Christmas collectors, putz house fans, putz house builders, and tinplate railroaders, we have set up a separate site called CardboardChristmas.com. Currently, this site contains a few articles and links to the best information we could find, about the history, collecting, purchasing, and making of cardboard Christmas houses of all kinds. Forums for user interaction, and a long list of articles we hope to add soon indicate that there is plenty of room for growth.
For more information, please click on the link below
 Musical Update to Old Christmas Tree Lights - You may recall that last year, we spent some of our web-development cycles rescuing a valuable web resource - George Nelson's 2006-2008 version of the Antique Christmas Lights Museum. We've been fortunate enough to get a few more updates on that site, including more of George's century-old recordings of Christmas music that we thought had been lost. If you're setting an early-1900s Christmas display or railroad around your tree this year, consider downloading some of these great wax recordings, burning them onto a CD and making your "background music" authentic. For more information, click on the following link:
 2003 Old Christmas Lights Site Restored - An even bigger find for Christmas lights fan - fellow web archaeologist Tom Elmore has reconstructed Bill Nelson's original Christmas light site. Some folks liked Bill's version even better than George's 2006-2008 version that we restored last year. Bill and George had different ways of presenting the information, and even different content - since George deleted some of Bill's content, then added new content of his own. Tom Elmore has graciously allowed us to host his archive of Bill's site in a subdirectory of the OldChristmasTreeLights.com page. For more information, click on the following link:
Save Money and Create Memories With DIY Projects - This is a good time to remind you that our affiliated sites have dozens of resources for inexpensively making your own Christmas decorations and heirloom-quality collectibles, including:
For making simple traditional paper Christmas tree decorations:
For making classic glittered cardboard Christmas houses with free downloadable patterns, graphics, and instructions.
For making vintage-inspired accessories for all kinds of indoor railroads and holiday displays:
For vintage-style wrapping paper patterns you can use for Christmas craft projects.
If you live within a reasonable drive of Springfield Ohio, you might want to know that the Race family is now preparing for our FOURTH annual Christmas-themed Open Railroad on the New Boston and Donnels Creek (Paul's railroad). Sorry for the short notice, we're behind on everything.
We're going ahead despite being WAY too busy most of the year. For one thing, several families have come to count on this as a way to "kick-start" their holiday season. For another, as a part of the Dayton (Ohio) Train Show's open railroad schedule, it gives us a chance to promote garden trains to folks who have just come from seeing a series of itty-bitty trains in crowded basements.
If you don't know what an "open garden railroad" is, it's a time for folks to drop by and see trains running outside. "Christmas-themed" means that for this event, we decorate dozens of trees, play christmas music "soundtracks," pop popcorn, bake treats, and do all we can to make our little empire into a "winter wonderland" for visitors. We also set out extra trains for the kids to run. Weather permitting, we usually have a movie showing on an outdoor screen. Of course, if you'd like to help run trains, supervise kids, make treats, provide Christmas music, or anything along that line, we'd be thrilled to have the help as well.
To learn more, get directions, volunteer to help, or see information about other Christmas-themed open houses in the area, please click the link below.
For a description of how things turned out on our 2010 open railroad, click the link below:
 Hawthorne Collectible Village Update - Since 2004, fans of collectible villages such as Hawthorne Village trains and towns have been helping support our sites by ordering collections through our providers and by sending in many questions, photographs, and ideas. This feedback, in turn, has generated new articles that a wide range of readers have found helpful - articles on scenery and construction, on making your own buildings, on the history of various hobbies and Christmas decorations, and so on.
This year I took an early look at what Hawthorne Village would be offering their fans this year. I was surprised and disappointed to find that several popular collections are now sold out. For example, only a few of the Thomas Kinkade trains and towns we reviewed last year are still available. And some of the great nostalgia villages are gone - to the dismay of readers who are already asking me about them. As far as I can tell, when the economy slowed down, Hawthorne Village slowed down orders for new collections. You can say what you want about the economy, but people ARE buying again in 2011 (in fact, October sales nearly set a record for reader purchases). And that means that some of the best-loved Hawthorne Village collections are in short supply. True, several nice new collections have been started. But several favorites have disappeared. And these are limited edition, which means that when they are sold out, they will be gone, period.
By the way, I have houses and accessories from several Hawthorne Village collections. Some have come directly from the Bradford Exchange (their distributor), and some have come from eBay, when a piece I wanted was no longer available new. The eBay houses were usually cheaper, of course. But nearly every piece I bought through eBay was missing an accessory or had a corner of a roof knocked off or some other damage. This doesn't bother me as much as it would some folks, since I set them out at open houses and other places they're likely to get bumped anyway, but it would upset a collector. Also, many of the collections NEVER appear on eBay - there weren't enough made to meet the initial demand, much less to supply an "aftermarket." In other words, if there's a piece or a collection you want and it's available new, don't wait too long. For more information on featured trains and towns, with links to other Hawthorne Village products, please, click on the following link:
Keep in Touch
Each month, we get more interest in this newsletter, in our Christmas sites, and in the Christmas traditions, ideas, and memories we discuss. We welcome your questions and comments as indicators of what we should be working on next (also, we always try to answer reader questions quickly). In addition, if you have any photos, tips, or articles you'd like to share with your fellow Christmas enthusiasts, please let us know.
Best Wishes! As always, our hope is that we can continue helping you and your family (as Dickens said of Scrooge):
Honor Christmas in your heart, and
"try to keep it all the year."
In the meantime, please keep in touch, and let us know what you'd like to see added or changed.
May God grant you joy and wonder every season of this year,
Paul and Shelia Race
http://FamilyChristmasOnline.com
http://CardboardChristmas.com
http://OldChristmasTreeLights.com
In the meantime, please accept our very best wishes for a great holiday season!
Paul and Shelia Race
Click here to view our December, 2010 newsletter:
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Announcement: Fourth Annual Christmas-Themed Open Railroad November 12