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...

German Christmas Card, Circa 1910 Our American tradition of Christmas trees probably had its roots in Germany in the 8 th century. St Boniface, the German apostle,  brought a fir tree with him when he preached to the common people  because he said its triangular outline represented the holy trinity. This was at a time when very few people could read and visual aids like his little tree were a big part of spreading the gospel.  Devout Germans took this form as a real manifestation of the trinity and decorated their trees only with candles in the beginning. By the 15 th century glass ornaments crept into view and in Latvia trees were even decorated with roses, associated with the Virgin Mary. It has been documented that in Strasbourg in 1605, on the Rhine bordering with France, someone brought a tree indoors and decorated it with roses made of paper, nuts, candy and of course, candles. The Christmas tree was officially born. Folks got very crafty after th...

Little pitchers, still affordable and what a story they tell of other times and places. I call my own fascination with collections focused hoarding and I blame my parents who also collected “things” , including smoking pipes, antique beer steins and tea cups. Perhaps it’s a genetic predisposition in many of us? The antithesis of the need to collect seems to be the person bent on shedding every trace of everything he or she ever knew and living basically out of a suitcase which we collectors find very odd. Recently there has been a move afoot to discard everything and live a scaled down minimal life. It’s supposed to make us happy and light and somehow righteous and fulfilled. I disagree completely with that notion, to collect Things is part of the human condition. So why do we collect stuff? Is it a leftover from caveman days? Could it be he-or she--who figured out how to collect the most useful stuff, lived to fight more woolly mammoths and raise children with the same bent...

A Real Regimental Stein Who knew that there were so many dedicated, dare I say rabid, collectors of beer steins? I have lately landed like an alien from Mars marveling in their midst, intrigued and fascinated by the history of something that is both plebeian (you drink beer from it) and beautiful (have you seen these things?) How did I get here? Re-roll the tape to 1957, when a little kid from California is uprooted and transplanted to Germany with her family. My dad was in the Air Force, a code breaker during the cold war. I had no idea what he did for a living until 20 years after he retired. I just knew it was top secret and all very hush hush. Seriously, what 8 year old in the known universe cares about what the parental units do when they are out of sight? Details of the intricate homey camp scenes on the beer rmug My mother was a culture vulture and we did not live in military housing on post if she could ever help it. Nope, we lived on the economy as the saying went,...