A Very Vintage Holiday: Photos Recall Christmas Past

The famed Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in 1955.

Denver's Christmas display in 1958.

A woman dressed in a Christmas costume, circa 1920s.

Balloons spelling out "Merry Xmas" during a 1939 parade in Boston.

Pennsylvania Station in New York adorned with Christmas decorations.

A boy distributes presents to his family in the 1950s.

Traditional Philippino Christmas decorations hanging over the streets in the 1950s.

A "modern" Christmas tree display in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Christmas decorations at Rockefeller Plaza in 1949.

An inmate at New York's Rikers Island jail painting a huge Santa Claus on a wall in 1955.

Rockefeller Christmas tree lit up at night in New York City in 1940.

Men fasten globes to one of the large Christmas lanterns ready to be erected in Regent Street in London.

Father Christmas with page boys around a Christmas tree in 1934.

Santa Claus is surrounded by scantily clad movie stars in Hollywood, California, in 1946, as his sleigh moves down "Santa Claus Lane."

A house with Christmas decorations in Queens, New York.

A young boy looks on in wonder as his model train moves around the track in this undated photograph.

A giant Christmas cracker containing an Austin car on show in a Wanstead motor depot in 1929.

Santa Claus carrying a bag full of presents in the late 1940s.

The home of Chicago Tribune publisher Robert R. McCormick in Wheaton, Illinois. There is snow on the ground and lights in the trees.

A boy and his father inspect a small evergreen tree during a Christmas tree hunt in a snowy field in 1955.

Christmas trees inside Grand Central Terminal.

A little girl stands by s Christmas tree clutching her doll in the 1950s.

Brussels prepares for its 1949 Christmas display, with millions of colored bulbs decorating the main streets.

A Christmas tree in a dining room at Parkside Hotel in New York City in 1931.

Car headlights add extra ribbons of light to the Christmas decorations and the festive "sugar cane" streetlamps of 1950s Washington.

Mary Pickford, assisted by little Johanna Randall (whom she is holding) and Muriel Wisdom, keeps up a Hollywood tradition in 1937 by trimming the first outdoor Christmas tree in Beverly Hills, California. Pickford was then the honorary chairman of the Holiday Beautification movement, which created the pre-holiday activities of the movie colony when she began to trim the tree.

People lined up on Wall Street in New York City to post their Christmas cards and packages at a huge mailbox.

A boy's first encounter with Santa in Erie County, Pennsylvania, in 1975.