Merry Christmas, everyone!
This 1909 picture, Christmas Morning, depicts a man with a young boy on his lap and a toy horse in his hand. I imagine the boy is the man’s grandson. I’m curious about the cap he’s wearing.
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I have a present for you too!
You’ve seen lots of stereoscopes on Old Spirituals. They are the side-by-side, nearly identical pairs of images that give you a left-eye and a right-eye view of the same scene. This is an example of a stereoscope photo made by photographer Carleton H. Graves:
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Stereoscope pictures were very popular around the turn of the century. When you see them as they are intended to be viewed, as a 3D image, they seem almost like magic. The problem is to see the 3D image, you need a stereoscope viewer–a gadget most people don’t own and probably wouldn’t work well with a virtual image anyway. Without the viewer, they look like two regular, almost identical pictures.
Stereoscope viewer from Flikr
I looked for a virtual stereoscope viewer a few years back and couldn’t find one but I checked again recently and some wonderful soul figured it out! The technology isn’t perfect (and my technical skills definitely aren’t) but I uploaded several pictures for you to see, including two from this post on Old Spirituals’ 3D This page.
It’s pretty easy to use. Click any picture to see the 3D version.
Once you open a picture, you’ll see it automatically pans back and forth, but you can pause it. You can also click on the picture and move it around with your mouse to see it from different angles.
Here’s one more stereoscope image called The Christmas Tea Party, from 1906. Ah, the kids’ table…brings back happy memories!
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old spirituals 
The “Christmas Morning” photo of the grandfatherly fellow holding the small boy is counterintuitive at first. In 1909, men donned a sleeping cap that was typically tasseled, but the one in the aforementioned photo is different from the norm. It’s similar to a Turkish man’s cap and/or an Islamic prayer hat. My final guess is that it is a man’s smoking hat commonly worn in the 1900s. An internet search will locate examples of smoking hats, even modern day sellers of such hats.
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Something about the hat made me think the older man might be Turkish. But I’d never heard of a smoking hat. (That’s very specialized, like a silk smoking jacket.) Merry Christmas, my friend!
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Teddy Roosevelt trivia and Christmas:“As a committed conservationist, President Theodore Roosevelt didn’t believe in cutting down trees for Christmas decorations. His White House had no tree in most of the years of his presidency, with him either forbidding them or simply not ordering one.
Instead of a tree, Teddy threw a carnival for children, featuring dinner, dancing, souvenirs, and Santa-shaped ice cream. However, Roosevelt’s son Archie defied the Christmas tree ban in 1902, and smuggled a small tree into a closet.”
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I love that story and I’ve never heard it. President Roosevelt was really good. He never paraded his virtues, but he lived his values! Still Christmas trees are really fun. I feel a sneaking sympathy for Archie!
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I’m surprised that Alice didn’t put up a tree on the roof of the White House!
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Ha! That would’ve been a very on brand move for Alice!
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The stereoscope photos have been enjoyable. I just can’t imagine the hoards of people going to events as they did then. I avoid crowds like that.
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Me too, Judy! I always feel apprehensive in crowds. Wonder what you’ll think of today’s post! It’s all about crowds.
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