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Joyful spirit of Christmas past drives their collecting
Joyful spirit of Christmas past drives their collecting
AT HOME
By JAN UEBELHERR
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
This Christmas tree display is featured in the Milwaukee County Historical Society's "Golden Glow of Christmas Past" exhibition in Milwaukee.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Photos/RICK WOOD
MILWAUKEE -- Nearly every day, Marilyn Treichel walks past the cabinet in her living room that holds a collection of Santas made in the 1880s and 1890s. She pauses, admires and handles some of the 25 or so figures.
"I stop and open it up. I open the Santa candy containers. I touch them often because I appreciate and I love them. They're a part of our life."
Ask the 60-something retiree from Kaukauna, Wis., just how much Christmas stuff she and her husband, Jerry, have collected over the years, and she stops to think. "Ho! golly," she says finally. "I have to have at least 100 Santa candy containers. And we have enough to fill 18 trees with ornaments," she says. That's one more than they routinely put up at Christmastime. Their 2,800-square-foot house becomes home to 17 feather trees, ranging in height from 2 to 6 feet tall -- the tallest with a patriotic theme.
Treichel sells holiday items at antique shows around Wisconsin, too.
"I sell Christmas at April, and I sell Christmas in October," she says.
Mention the notion of an America gone mad for holidays in general and Christmas in particular, and she replies, "Yes, we have, and isn't it wonderful? If more people celebrate the holidays and are in a holiday spirit, it just makes our world a better place."
Those who collect and display -- sometimes year-round -- the baubles of Christmas past and present are spending millions every year on their love affair with the holiday. It's a hot obsession fueled by a love of things retro, happy memories of childhood and simpler days when people had but a few well-crafted and cherished ornaments.
Earlier this month, Milwaukee played host, quietly, to one dedicated assembly of collectors, a group called Golden Glow.
Treichel, a member of Golden Glow's board, was in town to attend the convention. While the group devotes itself to antique (pre-1966) Christmas items, there is also a nod to those who buy new items at the Christkindlmarkt held just before the convention officially begins.
You probably didn't hear about the convention, with its lectures on how Hitler tried to rein in Christmas reverie (short answer: with great difficulty), and the life and times of locally famous elf Billie the Brownie and snow babies (glittery white childlike figurines).
Coinciding with the convention, the Milwaukee County Historical Society opened a Christmas exhibit. "The Golden Glow of Christmas Past," with a case devoted to Billie the Brownie, a Christmas elf popularized by Milwaukee's Schuster's department stores from the 1920 to '50s, went up in the Uihlein Gallery on July 31. It will remain up through Dec. 30.
With interest so strong in Christmas in general and Billie the Brownie in particular, the historical society figures it makes sense to leave it all up. Members could stroll over to the historical society from the nearby Hyatt Regency downtown, where the convention was held Aug. 3-6. They came from all over America and Europe, too.
"A lot of Germans come to Golden Glow," Treichel says with a chuckle. "They like to buy their ornaments back."
If Milwaukee residents heard nothing about Glow coming to town, that's exactly how they wanted it. The gathering was a members-only affair and closed to the public.
With a "museum room" of 36 locked and guarded showcases bearing at least $2 million in antique Christmas memorabilia, Glow members feel it's better to keep a low profile, says Michael Rhoads of the town of Middleton, Wis., co-chairman of the convention.
"Some members ... they don't want their collections known. We're talking lots of money," says Rhoads, who was once general manager of Starad Inc., a maker of holiday ornaments and collectibles, and who has served six consecutive terms as the chairman of Glow. At the convention, they buy, sell, learn and network about the thing they love best: old Christmas stuff. These hard-core collectors took photographs through the glass of locked display cases, scribbled notes, and bought and sold from a sales room and individual hotel rooms, some of which were transformed into mini-Christmas shops.
Christmas ornaments featuring "Billie the Brownie" character button are displayed.
Treichel thinks she did quite well this year: "I bought several things. I bought some ornaments and three wonderful candy container reindeer. Then I bought two Santas -- cardboard Santas probably from the 1930s."
Treichel sticks to old things, shunning even good reproductions. "I really never would go and buy a new Santa. I could buy an old one for the same amount, and it would be more valuable.
Treichel is among the roughly 20 percent of Glow's 1,100 members who might be described as year-round holiday displayers, Rhoads says.
He is not one of them, though he certainly has the supplies on hand should he ever change his mind.
"Some people say it's an illness," Rhoads says with a laugh. "People keep whole rooms up. They just enjoy having the items in front of them. I think they want to maintain the memories throughout the year, and they also really enjoy seeing it. And as they find new things throughout the year, they just keep adding to what's already there.
As Treichel says of her year-round displays, "We like to look at it. It just lifts your spirit."
All that joy, all those memories -- that's what feeds interest in buying and cherishing Christmas items.
At least that's what Rhoads and other collectors say. People collect Christmas things for the same reason people collect anything, they will tell you. They feel a connection, derive a heartfelt pleasure from these things. Many keep their collections out because they want to be around the things they love. They search all year for more things that they will love.
"Once you're a collector, you're a collector year-round," says Treichel, who confesses to being more than a bit annoyed when she walks into an antique shop in July and it doesn't have Christmas items displayed.
The hook that snagged her? A box of ornaments she bought for $100 at an auction about 13 years ago.
"In that box were so many beautiful ornaments. We just thought, 'This is for us. Look how beautiful it is.' And it's old -- we collect antiques. So it mushroomed on us. Our only regret is we didn't start collecting this stuff sooner because the prices have skyrocketed."
Rhoads talks about all the memories and history that are tied to these objects and gets stirred up when he sees them. He recalls his childhood in Pennsylvania, growing up in a family that "really celebrated Christmas and the holidays."
Buying and collecting all year, and belonging to Golden Glow, mean that "the excitement and the joy that Christmas is really remains with me every day of the year."
Rhoads thinks a lot of people discover Christmas collecting after their children are grown and finished with college -- a growing piece of the population. "Then they can start doing the things that they've always wanted to do and may not have had the money to do," he says. "And that, in itself, creates a want."
Rhoads views all the Christmas collecting as just another aspect of a holiday-happy nation. He points to the decorating that goes on for Halloween, Thanksgiving, even Easter -- all occasions that were once rather low-profile when it came to decking the halls.
It's something that Treichel and her husband, Jerry, happily indulge in, collecting antiques from holidays other than Christmas.
"My husband is more of a Halloween collector. Then we got into Easter and St. Patrick's Day. And the Fourth of July," she says. "It just decorates the house year-round. So it isn't just that we're limited to Christmas -- but our biggest collection is Christmas."
Says Rhoads, "There's a tree for everything. Years ago, who would have thought of Halloween ornaments? It's good marketing, and it's the American way. We've become fat with our obsessions."
Just how fat? The U.S. Census Bureau keeps track and can give an idea: In 2003, the most recent year for which figures are available, Americans spent $521 million on Christmas trees, ornaments and gifts; just one year earlier, that figure was $466 million. The slice of that pie that goes to ornaments alone is substantial. In 2004, an estimated $312 million in ornaments were imported from China, the leading source, between January and July.
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