What Santa Does in His Spare Time

You may have wondered what Santa does when he's not delivering presents. Here's your answer. He likes to work with miniatures and build dollhouses. He also has a habit of answering the phone when he passes a phone booth and hears it ringing. That doesn't happen much anymore because there are so few phone booths.

Oh, and he smokes a pipe.

Here are the backs of the first two cards in the same order. The first one was sent to Viola Vincent in Sidney, New York in 1914. The second one as sent to Miss Cassie Doran in Daleville, Pennsylvania in 1908.

Christmas Rhymes

These rhymes are much better than the one I posted earlier with a Christmas poem for Jews. That needed a little work. I know that some of you get tired of Christmas cards. On the other hand, people like me who have so many, see this as the only opportunity to post a lot of them. I wish I had some Hanukkah postcards. I would post them if I had any, but I never see them anywhere.

In any case, here's Santa with some Christmas rhymes. Feel free to download these images if you have a use for them.

Here's the back of the first card, sent to Miss Edna Witherstine in Herkimer, New York in 1910.

The back of the other cards are blank.

Fröhliche Weihnachten

This is one of the many cards I have that were sent to Trina von Oesen in Germany. I have hesitated to post them, because I struggle with the old Sütterlin handwriting.

For whatever reason, this handwriting was taught in German schools between 1915 and 1941. Thank God it wasn't longer. There are numerous problems in deciphering this handwriting, but the main ones are that so many letters look alike and that the upper case and lower case of the same letter often look very different. If I want to read these postcards, I am going to have to learn to decipher the handwriting.
Here is my name (Christine) written in Sütterlin (and that's if it's written neatly):

 It kind of makes sense if you already know what it's supposed to be, even though the letter E looks very much like the letter N.  The letter C is one of the oddest, in my opinion. Here is lowercase C and capital C:

And then there are several different versions of the letter s

Anyway, I'm determined to learn it, because otherwise I will be unable to read the backs of these cards--and there are lots of them.

This one, luckily, is fairly simple.

The front of the cards says Merry Christmas. The message on the back continues with the message:

wishes you with all his (her) heart,

Your F.      Auf Wiedersehen