I’m listening to Christmas music on the day before Thanksgiving. Go figure. I told Google to play holiday music from the Big Band Era. That is just how I roll. I am also watching Holiday Home Tours on Youtube. This is how I spend my day off.
Y’all I think I missed my decade. I am in love with all things 1940’s. Of course, if I was actually an adult in the 1940s, I probably wouldn’t be alive right now so there is that……
The horribleness of war was over and it was a new chapter for America. People were ready to look ahead.
I love big band music, watching swing dance, and listening to the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, and Rosemary Clooney. It is impossible to be down when one listens to this music…..Jazz and smooth velvety voices.
Some of my favorite black and white movies are from the 1940s. The time when Hollywood was glamorous and golden. Casablanca, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Philadelphia Story, Arsenic and Old Lace, His Girl Friday, Miracle on 34th Street (the original!). I could go on and on. I really liked Jimmy Stewart…one of my favorites.
Part of my love comes from vintage decorating. I am getting ready to decorate for Christmas this weekend, which will include my 1940s inspired decorations. My Putz houses, vintage Santa, Christmas story and hymn book from the 40’s, and an old, Italian nativity set. Although I am constantly looking at new decorating styles, there is something about the old, the vintage, the retro that pulls at me. I enjoy things that tell a story and have a history.
Even in the 1940’s laundry had to be done. Mind you it is a lot easier today than it was then, but alas, it still must be done……so off I go.
It Just Dawned On Me 
I was born in 1945, so I don’t remember a lot except my loving family, sitting with my grandma in her overstuffed chair as she prayed, greeting my dad as he turned the corner walking home from the bus stop. Our home was always fully decorated for Christmas inside & out, lots of bright lights & the nativity always the centerpiece. But I do love that era, too: the big band, swing music & dance, the styles, the movies. Was life really less complicated? I doubt it, but it does seem it was a simpler time.