The Thrifting Anthropologist

Getting ready for my annual cookie baking frenzy I got my basket of cookie cutters out and added this year’s little  Scottie d og to the group. I love old cookie cutters and I’m always looking for them when I thrift shop.  Cookie cutters come in all sizes, the big rabbit is about 8 inches tall and the little one barely squeaks out at an inch. Cookie cutters are still a collectible that most of us can afford to indulge in and I just discovered there are actually cookie cutter collector clubs, who knew?   Yes, there are a few that have sold for thousands of dollars, but those are really, really old and incredibly rare and I seriously doubt that I will be running across one in my local Goodwill. Really old cookie cutters have flat backs and don't always have handles That being said, what is the history behind these common and fun household items? Who thought of making a piece of tin into something you could mass produce cookies with? Can you imagine h...

In the 1950s we discovered fun and affordable Christmas plastic Our families have so many holiday traditions, in each family we have developed things that we hold dear as making Christmas OUR Christmas. I was curious as to how these happened so... When you send that holiday card to your list, know that the first holiday greeting cards were commissioned in 1843 by a very clever Henry Cole who had John Callicot Horsley illustrate them. Sheer marketing genius, as Cole was a government worker who had helped come up with the idea of the post office and the “Penny Post” two years previously as a way of giving ordinary people easy access to sending and receiving mail in England.  The age of steam made it all work because trains were replacing the horse and carriage conveying mail and packages quickly long distances. The price went down even further when you could mail a card for a half penny if the envelope wasn’t sealed, just tucked in. I remember sending cards cheaply a long ti...

                         from Buzzfeed                             creepy kid ghosts                                          Halloween is one of our favorite holidays in America, for both kids and grownups. How did it get here and what is the significance of the things we associate with the holiday? Halloween is actually a fairly modern take on an ancient celebration and ritual in the pagan/Celtic world that was called Samhain, pronounced Sah-win.  Samhain was celebrated halfway between the autumn equinox and winter solstice, generally October 30 to November 1 st (dates were added after calendars came along). It was a time when the veils between the worlds were thinnest and the dead could cross over; it was a time for celebrating a suc...