Christmas Eve 1955

It's Christmas Eve. Hard to believe it's here already!

Seventy years ago on Christmas Eve 1955, this was the front page of the Lorain Journal.

Terrible flooding of the Feather River forced the evacuation of 10,000 residents near Marysville, California as the headline notes. Elsewhere on the front page was a report of hurricane-like winds hitting eastern Colorado cities; a woman swipes a $138 mink dyed marmot cape from Ted Jacob's; Elyria's bus line was experiencing money troubles; and an Editorial describing the holiday as a Christmas To Remember, with local employment at an all-time high.

Here are a few more pages from that Christmas Eve edition. There was no paper the next day so this edition was crammed with holiday greetings from advertisers, including some full-pagers. We also get a nice Editorial column with a sprinkling of poems, carols and eloquent sentiments.

The Christmas Eve edition also had two interesting photo features – one about the last ship of the season to arrive to be "put to bed" at the Lorain yards of the American Ship Building Co. and one about the record volume of mail handled by the Lorain Post Office.

This last group of pages includes a movie & entertainment page; a page of classifieds; the comics page; and finally, the television and radio grids.

Note the small ad for the Grove movie theater showing three of my favorites: She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (with John Wayne); Jail Busters (with the Bowery Boys); and The Man From Laramie (with James Stewart).

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Just think; over in Brownhelm Township tonight, Santa Claus is visiting homes, just as he has since 1932. It's been a favorite topic on this blog, with a variety of posts dedicated to it including the news of the very first Community Christmas in 1932.

Here's the 1955 mention of it in the Journal from November 29, 1955.

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For more holiday fun, visit this post of mine from 2010 in which I reminisce about believing in Santa Claus.

And don't forget to drop by the two blogs of my regular commenter Buster. His Swinging Singles blog (which focuses on 45s and 78s) has an interesting post about the 1944 Christmas Seal Radio Spots; and his Big 10-Inch Record has several great holiday posts. Buster includes links so you can download the music and enjoy it on your own device.

Don't miss his past post on A Dragnet Christmas. It's terrific (and downloadable) and includes the 1950s Christmas TV episode, the singles, the parodies, newspaper clippings and photos. Thanks, Buster!