The Thrifting Anthropologist

Easter arrived on American shores with the first German immigrants in the 17 th century. They brought the Easter hare to this country and from the Pennsylvania Dutch it has spread like, well, rabbits. Every Bunny was Kung Fu fighting. Sorry, I couldn't help it.  The word Easter comes from Eostre, an ancient German goddess of Spring. Legend says the rabbit was associated with her and it does appear in stories from ancient times. The rabbit somehow got itself associated with the Virgin Mary, a cross pollination of Christianity and pagan rites is very common throughout history, and often you will see paintings of the Virgin and Child with a rabbit tucked in somewhere.   Hats in Easter Egg colors! But a rabbit and eggs?   Eggs would have most likely the easiest food to consume in breaking a Lenten fast. They could be boiled ahead of time and ready to gobble up. They also represent spring and fertility and new beginnings. The Germans discovered that if ...

The Oldest Known Valentine, from 1790, is now Valued at about $5000,  which also makes it the world's most expensive valentine Valentine’s Day is like so many other holidays we celebrate, really old and really pagan in its origins. The  Catholic saint for whom the holiday is named dates back to Roman Christians, and his legend is murky at best. He could have been one of three guys, so you can choose the martyr whose story you like best. They do all have in common that were strong, heroic, and definitely romantic and filled the bill for the church to eradicate one more pagan celebration. Around 270 A.D. the Christian church decided to assign February 14 th to the murky saint as his saint’s day because guess what? A pagan celebration took place the next day. Lupercalia was a seriously pagan festival dedicated to Faunus, the god of agriculture and Romulus and Remus, the twins who are the designated founders of Rome. A Howland Valentine, fussy, frilly and Victori...

Who Wouldn't Want a Wind Up Dick Tracy Car? This one is in space 88 at Finders Keepers  As the mom of four boys who were all obsessed with both cars and Legos, I wondered about toys with wheels? Research shows that wheeled toys have been around as long as the wheel has. Kid’s toys mimic the world around them, so if the family had wheels so did the kids.  Wheeled toys and pull toys have captured imaginations for a very, very long time. Still in marvelous existence, historians and archaeologists have found a cat pull toy from an ancient Egyptian household in Thebes, sans wheels nowadays;  a miniature Trojan style horse from Greece and on the other side of the world, a Mexican Remojada deer pull toy from Vera Cruz. 10th Century Greek Horse Vera Cruz Mexico Clay Wheeled Deer Egyptian Cat Toy from Thebes But before the 1850s toys with wheels were mostly carved wood. The industrial age changed all that and with factories came new processes and wa...

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...