Painted rock in parking lot of Fry's grocery store in San Tan Valley

Christmas cats 2025

Merry Christmas! I didn't get around to all the Yuletide posts I wanted to do this month, because every day is endlessly busy and I fell out of my writing routine. But for Christmas Day I wanted to share photos of some of the indoor and outdoor cats here at the desert abode. (If you want to browse multitudes of past Christmas posts, start here.)

Above: These feral/community cat brothers are Creamsicle, left, and Splash. They're both a little under 3½ years old, with Creamsicle being the older one. Both sons of Mamacita. Both trapped and neutered quite a while ago. They spent part of Christmas Eve lounging and napping in our front window well.

Here's another of Creamsicle. He likes to playfully swat my hand when I'm feeding him and his mother cheese. We connected through the window last night. I've never really pet him but it's easy to imagine him being a decent indoor cat, in the vein of Bandit.

Brave Sir Oliver, son of Mamacita via her last litter, peeks out from underneath our Christmas tree.

There's nothing Christmasy in this recent photo of Lady Samantha Penguin, but I wanted to include her because she's such a pretty girl.

Big Boi, father and/or grandfather of nearly all things, stands near the Christmas tree. He's either waiting for treats or waiting for me to go sit on the sofa and watch a movie so that he can get many pets and then doze off. 

Venus — son of Cirque, grandson of Mamacita and nephew of Creamsicle — is our only indoor cat that won't let me pet him. But he sure loves me when it's time for food and treats. 

Mommy Orange (left), mother or aunt of many of our indoor kitties, sits in a cat bed with her daughter Nebula. They are often inseparable nap partners.

Pete loves hanging out underneath the Christmas tree. She spends most of her day with her sister IceBear.

Marmalade is our newest outdoor feral/community cat. He's not neutered and his presence appears to have upset the outdoor cat ecosystem and pecking order, which is a bummer. Looking at him, it's hard not to think he's got some of Big Boi's DNA somewhere in his ancestral line.

Finally, the skunks haven't been coming as frequently, or in as great of a volume, as they did during the summer. But this fellow made a Christmas Eve visit last night. It might be Double Dot or Em Dash, but I don't see them often enough to know for sure anymore. I gave him a couple pieces of homemade Christmas cookie and he gobbled them up.

Miami's merry mural

I recently took this photo of the holly-jolly Christmas mural in Miami, Arizona, that was painted last year by Sylves Cordero. The little town does a great job of decorating its downtown for residents and tourists, even after a brutal year that saw autumn flooding devastate parts of the town.

I still have some photos from a summer visit to Miami that I hope to post at some point. In the meantime, here are some past related posts:

• Psychogeography, snickelways of Miami, Arizona: August 2021
• Cathy's Little Free Libraries in Globe, Arizona

Screenshot & memories: Turntable and Christmas tunes

I've previously done a bunch of "Snapshot & memories" posts (see list below), but what is the fate of snapshots and our photo memories, moving forward? How many physical 21st century snapshots will there be in future drawers and albums and shoeboxes? Most of the pictures documenting our lives are on our phones and/or in the cloud. That seems a far more fragile existence than we had in the second half of the 20th century.

So now I sometimes find myself documenting screenshots. Here's one from December 29, 2013, that shows the record player/radio cabinet at the family house on Oak Crest Lane in Wallingford. It was quite the behemoth, with the records stored underneath. When I was growing up, it got most of its use when friends and family were over during the Christmas holidays. But the following generation had some different ideas, as I wrote in 2013: "Ye olde family turntable/radio has been playing some Katy Perry, Daft Punk and, I think, Eminem this morning. It's held up well so far after being powered up for the first time in probably over a decade."

Since it's December, this image got me to thinking about all the vinyl Christmas albums from that cabinet we listened to from the mid-1970s through the 1990s. Many of the songs were the standards we still listen to on the radio or music streaming services these days: Burl Ives, Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis, etc. But you'd be listening to a whole album by one artist before moving on to the next one, which allowed for Yuletide vibe shifts every 45 minutes, instead of every 4 minutes. And then you'd put thought into what record went on next.

These are some of the albums I remember being in that cabinet:

Holiday Sing Along with Mitch (1961) and Christmas Sing-Along with Mitch (1958)

The Andy Williams Christmas Album (1963)

There was at least one Johnny Mathis album, and probably more than one. None of the covers ring an exact bell in my memory, but this one seems likely: Christmas with Johnny Mathis.

Some of the following are guesses, because my memory is hazy. I wish I had documented these albums and written this post a quarter-century ago, even though I wasn't blogging then, unless you count UsedPandas.com. All of these family albums will be lost in time, like carols in snow.

We did have some compilation albums. This one from the popular Great Songs of Christmas series seems familiar.

We certainly had Perry Como. This one, The Perry Como Christmas Album, seems like it would have been in the cabinet.

And certainly we had Bing Crosby. Perhaps including some of his older ones, such as Merry Christmas, which was first issued in 1945 but saw many subsequent revisions and re-releases.

Finally, this one kind of rings a bell, and it was local: The Glorious Sound of Christmas by the the Philadelphia Orchestra, led by Eugene Ormandy (1962).

I wish I could remember more specifics. I'm sure there was a Gene Autry album, a Nat King Cole album, a Burl Ives album and probably a Dean Martin album. In the 1990s, Mom added famous albums by Manheim Steamroller and Vince Guaraldi Trio (A Charlie Brown Christmas) to the festive mix.

Snapshot & memories posts          

• Adorable little me on Mulberry Street
• Kitchen at Willow Street house in Montoursville
• Me and Pop-Pop in the kitchen
• Commodore 64 corner
• (Missing) snapshot & memories: Thanksgiving
• Me & Cyrano
• Me in a Star Trek shirt
• All kids do these days is play video games
• Posing with a Saturn V in 1982
• The Phillies are hot, and so was I
• Relocated fire engine in Montoursville
• Family outfits of 1972
• Our little bookstore
• Well-dressed for first day of nursery school

Mystery Christmas RPPC from 1914

Beyond the photo itself, there are really no clues to help us discover more about this real photo postcard that was presented to someone at Christmas 1914. I figure it was either delivered in person or mailed inside an envelope. 

The writing on the front states "December 1914" and the generic message on the back simply states "A very happy Christmas to you all from us all! 1914." 

Cartolina Postale is Italian for postcard. Gevaert is presumably the name of the company (in Europe?) that manufactured the RPPC.

So, who is this and where is this? It would seem we might have a slim chance of identifying the location, if it still exists, given the unique look of the concrete stairs and the concrete wall the young woman is sitting upon. As for her, the resolution isn't very good, but she's wearing a wide-brim hat, a jacket, a skirt and boots. It looks like maybe she's tucked a small branch into her jacket, but I'm eager for second opinions on that. And it looks like she has a ring on one finger.

Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments. Also, if you're interested, this 2021 post has a list of most of the other "mystery RPPC" posts on Papergreat.

Beautiful old Christmas box from The Emporium in San Francisco

I recently purchased some vintage Christmas Cinderella stamps, and they came packaged in something even more beautiful than the stamps themselves — this old box from The Emporium department store in San Francisco, California.

The box measures 9½ inches by 6¼ inches by 1 inch. The illustration on the top is in black, red, green and blue. It features a tree-lined village and a trio of figures decked out in wide skirts and/or scarves. No artist is noted. The box originally contained "12 All Different Parchment Folders Colorful Christmas Designs." Perhaps they were done by the same artist who did the design for the box.

There's a price tag for The Emporium stating that this cost 50 cents at the time. I think that helps to confirm that this is many, many decades old. Emporium Capwell Co. was a San Francisco department store chain that was founded in the late 1800s and was known as The Emporium from 1896 to 1980. It then underwent some branding changes before going defunct in 1996.

If I had to hazard a guess as to when this box was produced I'd probably say the 1940s. But nothing from 1930 to 1960 would surprise me as the right answer.

Christmastime was huge at The Emporium, as was the case at many big department stores in the 20th century. This 1995 article on SFGate details some of its Christmas spectacles and readers' memories of them. There are also a lot of comments on this 2024 Facebook post.

Saturday's peaceful postcard

This undated postcard (probably from the 1960s) features the "Waiting Room for ceremonial tea" at the Mikyato Hotel in Kyoto, Japan, a city that dates to 794. It's a beautiful location, with its waterfall, boulders, bushes, gravel and small structure that blends perfectly with its surrounding. It believe it's called a chashitsu, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

According to Wikipedia:

"The term chashitsu came into use after the start of the Edo period (c. 1600). In earlier times, various terms were used for spaces used for tea ceremony, such as chanoyu zashiki (茶湯座敷, "sitting room for chanoyu"), sukiya (place for poetically inclined aesthetic pursuits [fūryū, 風流]) such as chanoyu), and kakoi (囲, "partitioned-off space"). An account stated that it was the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa who built the first chashitsu at his Higashiyama villa in Kyoto. It was described as a small room of four-and-a-half tatami and was separated from the main residence."

This location may still exist, though it's surely been modified over the decades. And of course tea ceremonies for tourists are much more commercialized. It's likely there are multiple hotel-based ceremonial tea room experiences offered in Kyoto. This website for Miyako Hotel Kyoto Hachijo offers a "Japanese tea ceremony experience wearing kimono" for 10,000 yen (about $64 today). 

And I found a 2023 article by The Mainichi newspaper that features some photos that look like they might be of the same location shown on this postcard. 

Ringing in the holly-jolly month with a vintage Christmas postcard

Somehow, December returned.

We're now in the Yuletide countdown and the countdown to 2026, so there will be some holiday-themed posts sprinkled across this month, even though it's 70 degrees today in the Sonoran desert.

Papergreat has featured more then 200 posts themed "Christmas" over its decade and a half of existence. I haven't actually updated the directory since 2000, but this post will get you to dozens upon dozens of past posts, if jingle bells are your jam.

Today's postcard is a Whitney Made card that was postmarked at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve in 1915 and mailed to Clara Hoff of Berkeley, California. The short cursive note on the back states: 

Dear Clara

I wish you all the good things your stockings can possibly hold.

Mrs. Schneider

The image on the front of the postcard features Santa Claus holding up a lantern so he can double-check his list while on someone's porch. The message states:

I'LL BE THERE TO-NIGHT

SO TURN DOWN YOUR LIGHT

HANG UP YOUR STOCKING

AND CLOSE YOUR EYES TIGHT

The idea that you're not supposed to see Santa Claus is a superstition that has persisted through the decades. When being interviewed for the Dartmouth Folklore Archive in 2021, 18-year-old L.M. stated:

“Me and my younger cousin Mallory every year had an app on our Mom’s phones called Santa Tracker. We would track Santa while he was flying around delivering presents around dessert time to make sure he wouldn’t come to our house before we were asleep because we wouldn’t get any presents. Santa’s not going to give you any presents unless you’re in bed and asleep. If you weren’t in bed when Santa came it meant you were naughty and got Coal in your stocking, that's what our Moms told us.”