AA-2026-87F556
On the image
A girl of about ten stands in her pajamas beside the family Christmas tree, mid-decoration, holding a strand of tinsel the way someone holds a thing they have been told to hang carefully. The tree is a real pine strung with the large multicolored bulbs of the era, the kind that ran hot enough to matter and went out all at once when one bulb failed, a troubleshooting ritual that consumed entire Christmas Eve evenings. To her right sits a console television in a mahogany cabinet — the furniture-grade housing that manufacturers used in the 1950s to convince American families they were buying a piece of the living room, not a machine. The nativity figures arranged at the base of the tree are smaller than the light bulbs. Every object in the room was chosen to signal arrival into the postwar middle class, and the camera was pointed at all of it with complete sincerity, which is the most period-accurate thing about the picture.
Visually related — by likeness
Decorating the Tree, Christmas Morning, 1950s. 1953–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-87F556. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/decorating-the-tree-christmas-morning-1950s.
@misc{aaAA202687F556,
title = {Decorating the Tree, Christmas Morning, 1950s},
year = {1953–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-87F556},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/decorating-the-tree-christmas-morning-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Decorating the Tree, Christmas Morning, 1950s PY - 1953–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-87F556 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/decorating-the-tree-christmas-morning-1950s ER -
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