MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM
THE DICKENS’ CAROLERS AT DISNEYLAND
To start the Christmas season off right here at DHI, I offer this photo from December 1958. Taken at Disneyland, it features the Dickens’ Carolers in front of the Emporium on Main Street, U.S.A. And check out those rather, uh, eclectic Christmas decorations hovering over their heads. Classic fifties plywood people … but at Disneyland?
Also, take note that the little plywood boy is holding a Star of David, so I believe offering Happy Hanukkah to Disneyland’s Jewish guests. Yet, one more small piece of ammunition in the idiotic notion that Walt was Anti-Semitic! (This is just three years after the Beverly Hills B’Nai B’rith chapter awarded him their Man of the Year.)
I am positive it is a Star of David, as the only other Christmas-type of celebration that features stars on sticks, is the Lucia celebration from Sweden. In the Lucia procession, the girls carry candles (including a flaming ring of lighted candles on their head) and the boys carry a star on a stick. The only difference is that in the Lucia festival, it is a five-pointed star.
Enjoy!
NOTE: Sorry, I had a technical issue with the photograph, so it did not appear until I fixed it just now. As my apology, I am including below a second image taken at the same time, from a different angle. Again, I’m learning as I go (THANKS a million to all who posted help on my request for scanning information), and tried to scan these at a high enough resolution to really enjoy them.
It’s really funny to see the cheap decorations that used to show up at Disneyland in the early days.
I’m certain it’s a Star of David as well. If you look at the larger version you can see that they removed his TORCH and added a different pole to attach the star. So, this was intentional and done by someone at Disney. One could even say the boy has a yarmulke on.
Those cutout decorations remind me of simple Christmas card artwork from the era (or even older); there were other decorations on City Hall as well:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v470/bananaphone5000/NEWGORILLA/57CityHall.jpg