Advent Calendar - Christmas Gifts

Each year I received a new doll for Christmas.  One year I received a walking doll which I'll discuss more in an entry about visiting Santa.  Another year I received a "wedding dress doll", as I called her.  I don't remember giving her a name because I never played with her.  I wanted her to stay in perfect condition so she stayed on my bed and later in a box under my bed. I never felt close to her like I did my Tiny Tears doll I received in 1955 and still have.

 She had painted-on hair, dark brown in color like mine - not blonde!  She had eyelashes and eyes that opened and closed.  Best of all she would drink a bottle, and cry tears or pee.  One day a friend and I mixed up a concoction that was supposed to be formula to put in the bottle.  To my delight and the envy of my friends, it made my doll smell like "baby spit-up".  Like so many things we did not realize as being toxic back then, that formula was and has aided in the aging of her tiny body.

Believe it or not, I loved these pajamas my dear Aunt Lou gave my cousins and me in 1954.  The shirt was red and white stripes and the bloomers were red,  my favorite color at the time.  The shirt and bloomers swallowed me; I was so disappointed my sleeves had to be rolled up and the bloomers were too big to wear.  This picture was taken at our house in Abilene, Texas.  We moved from Menard to Abilene in the summer of 1954 so this was our first Christmas there.  I wish I had my Daddy's rolltop desk pictured in the background, but I do have my mother's cedar chest that's pictured under the Christmas tree.