Amaryllis, Alberta, Canada, ca. 1930, hand-colored glass lantern slide by William Copeland McCalla, via Provincial Archives of Alberta Commons on flickr (all images here).
The photographer, William McCalla, was interested in botany and photography from an early age. He studied at Cornell University in the early 1890s and later worked in western Canada as a farmer, librarian, and Natural History teacher. While teaching from 1925 to 1938, he made over 1,000 lantern slides of plants and animals as visual aids.
The slides were donated to the Archives by his son and granddaughter in 1982 and 2007.
Raising the Madison Square Christmas tree, ca. 1912 or 1913, New York City, by Bain News Service, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (all photos here).
The park is located at Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 23rd Street.
Madison Square may have been* the site of the first illuminated community Christmas tree in America — lit on December 24, 1912.
The tradition is continued today by the Madison Square Park Conservancy.
Light is a dancer here and cannot rest.
No tanagers or jays are half so bright
As swarms of fire that deep in fragrance nest
In jungles of the gilt exotic night. . .— John Frederick Nims, from “Christmas Tree“
*There may have been two prior illuminated community trees: in San Diego in 1904 and Pasadena in 1909.
Rae family home with fern fronds as Christmas decorations, Jericho, Victoria, Australia, ca. 1918, via Museums Victoria Collection.
Jericho was a gold mining town, established in the 1860s. The local tree ferns resembling palm trees were said to remind early settlers of the biblical Jericho. By 1918, the old settlement was well into a decline, and its last buildings were destroyed by a bush fire in 1939.
enclos*ure 