Back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth – when I was just a kid during the decade immediately following WWII, Easton looked much the same as it does today. Sure, the houses were generally smaller, everyone drove a vehicle that needed tire chains when it snowed, and nearly every kid under the age of twelve carried a cartoon-themed tin lunch box to school. There was a milk box on every rear stoop, a TV antenna on every roof, and a garbage incinerator in just about every back yard. Churches were mostly full even on Sundays that weren’t official religious holidays and all the men and boys in attendance were neatly dressed in suits and ties, while all the women and girls wore dresses and fancy hats. Nearly every adult smoked a pack or more of cigarettes every day, kids drank whole milk, and the family dog ate whatever was leftover and scraped from the plates before someone washed and dried them by hand.
But, if aliens had abducted you in 1950 and then redeposited you back in Easton in 2023, there is little doubt that you wouldn’t know where you were or what most things are or used to be. Greiser’s is still Greiser’s, just a whole lot more organized with much better coffee; the Bluebird is still the Bluebird, complete with a Wieser still turning wrenches in one of the work bays; the Adams schoolhouse is still standing, it just gets moved to a different location every fifty or sixty years; and the old Congregational Church still doesn’t have any running water.
Yep, Easton still looks like Easton, but has Christmas really changed much over the years? I think it has.
To start, Easton wasn’t even close to being the Christmas Tree Capital of Connecticut in 1950. If you purchased a Christmas tree in town, chances were that you bought it at the Fire House or maybe at one of the general stores such as Chris Rudolph’s North End Market on Stepney Road. Both of those locations sold trees grown in Maine, not Easton. Aspetuck Orchards (the Apple Barn) was the first local commercial operation that handled trees grown on their own property, but during that era, there were no family friendly, “cut your own” tree farms in existence.
The Christmas season never began before Thanksgiving. The days that followed Thanksgiving had no quirky names and no special sales to jump start the gift buying season. Sales always came after Christmas, never before. Retail stores drew in customers by creating inviting displays and some incredibly well conceived store windows. If certain items turned out to be slow movers, those stores offered heavy discounts in January when business was slow, not during the height of the Christmas rush when customers were eager to purchase something to put under the tree.
Bridgeport was where just about everyone in Easton went to shop. D. M. Read and Howland’s were the largest department stores in that city and their competition rivaled that of Macy’s and Gimbel’s in New York City, only on a much smaller scale. Both stores were fully decked out for Christmas, and both had their own Santa Claus for taking photographs with the kids. Read’s was five stories in height and had an elevator with a uniformed operator to deliver you to the department of your choice. “Toyland” was on the fifth floor and every kid’s favorite destination. In 1950, there were no credit cards and ATM’s were yet to be invented. Cash was king and purchases made in large stores were handled by salesclerks who took your money and sent it along with a sales ticket through a vacuum tube that delivered it to the cashier’s office where change was made and sent back to the clerk.
While for 51 weeks each year the only night that downtown stores remained open past 6 PM was on Thursday, during the week before Christmas, most remained open until 9. No retailers were open on Sundays – period! As difficult as it is to imagine today, downtown Bridgeport in the 1950’s was a bustling and beautiful city.
During an era when most families only had a single automobile, residents of Easton could catch a bus that would take them as far as the Bridgeport Railroad Station, or they could switch bus routes along the way to make connections to other parts of the city. The Connecticut Railway and Lighting Company ran a Monday through Saturday schedule with stops at Halzack’s and Greiser’s (where the bus would turn around). There were seven buses that ran each day between 6:55 AM and 6:20 PM. The trip from Greiser’s to the railway station took 35 minutes. CR&L buses were painted in green and cream, and every one of them that made the Easton run left a trail of blue smoke thick enough to kill every mosquito within a half a mile of Sport Hill and Center Roads.
Beginning shortly after Thanksgiving, motorists driving up Sport Hill Road were greeted by a huge lit white star that sat on the face of the rocky cliff on the western side of the road just north of where Old Sport Hill Road intersects the main highway. Sherman and Lillian Whiting lived at 29 Old Sport Hill Road and that star was a tribute to their daughter, Carol, who died in a tragic automobile accident in Fairfield in 1946. Known as “Whiting’s Star” it could be seen from the Merritt Parkway by southbound traffic shortly after passing Exit 47 at Park Avenue. For over 30 years, that star captured the hearts of Eastonites and the spirit of the season.
In the early 1950’s there were three active churches in Easton; the Congregational and Jesse Lee Methodist are still in the same structures. The congregation of the Episcopal Church on Westport Road had outgrown its tiny chapel and moved into the old Baptist Church next to Union Cemetery in the late 1940’s. All three churches were thriving operations. The Congregational Church had an Adult Social Club, a Junior Choir, a Senior Choir, a Men’s Club, a Steeple Guild for the ladies, a Study and Service Club, a youth group called the Crusaders, and of course, a Sunday School.
Religion was an important aspect of most people’s lives in the middle of the 20th century, and in Easton the Christian religion wasn’t just the dominant religion, it was the only one that had any significant representation. It wasn’t at all unusual for a public-school teacher to begin the day with a Christian prayer following the Pledge of Allegiance to the nation’s flag. When Christmas came, every class in every grade participated in the celebration in one way or another. Easton wasn’t alone in seeing a crèche pop up in front of its Town Hall shortly after Thanksgiving. Church and State may have been technically separate according to the Constitution, but during the month of December, one would have been hard pressed to see it.
As Christmas approached, many folks in Easton made arrangements with Mister Kay on Stepney Road to have a fresh turkey or goose ready for the family feast. John Kay’s poultry farm had its pens full of birds that were destined to be the center of attention come either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Much like today’s Christmas tree farms where you can choose the exact tree you desire while it is still firmly planted in the ground, at Kay’s you could choose your bird while it was still walking around in his poultry yard. When you were ready, that bird was all plucked and wrapped in butcher’s paper waiting to be taken home.
Christmas Eve saw every church in town filled to capacity. Real wax candles were lit and placed in all the windows and the electric lights were extinguished. The choirs filled the air with traditional religious music commemorating the birth of Jesus and the bells in the steeple rang out in the cold winter air.
The gifts of that era were quite different than today’s assortment of electronic wizardry that requires multiple variations of chargers and a degree in electrical engineering to operate. Some of the usual fare for dads included cartons of cigarettes adorned with Christmas scenes, more neckties to add to the two dozen he already had hung on his tie rack in the closet, and an assortment of handkerchiefs he could fold and put in the lapel pockets of his business suits. Moms would be rewarded with a box of Whitman’s Samplers that contained enough candy to last her until Valentine’s Day, a new pair of over-the-elbow gloves she could wear to church, or some more mundane tools of the “mom trade” like a new Westinghouse waffle iron or an electric mixer from Sunbeam.
In 1950, kids never received anything that required batteries. Boys got an erector set made of real steel, complete with edges sharp enough to slice a finger so deep as to require a few stitches, or a chemistry set by AC Gilbert that could be used to make real gun powder. Girls received dolls that cried or talked and closed their eyes when laid down on their back. Unlike their male counterparts, girls were usually happy to open a box that contained new clothes or a pair of patent leather shoes they could wear to church.
Perhaps the best part of Christmas was that the packaging left over after all the gifts were opened didn’t require a five-yard dumpster to haul it away. Most of it was either burned in the fireplace or that incinerator in the back yard.
Yes, I think Christmas has changed over the years, but I will leave it up to the reader to decide if those changes are for the better or for the worse. But those of us who have lived through 60, 70, or even 80 Christmases likely have some fond memories of those times gone by.
Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays if you prefer. In any event, may your lives be filled with happiness and joy in a world that isn’t always as kind as it should be.
