Turn back the clock and experience the magic of yesteryear with this collection of black and white photographs sure to awaken the holiday spirit.

  • Bettmann via Getty Images
    The famed Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in 1955. 

  • Denver Post via Getty Images
    Denver’s Christmas display in 1958. 

  • Bettmann via Getty Images
    A woman dressed in a Christmas costume, circa 1920s.

  • Boston Globe via Getty Images
    Balloons spelling out “Merry Xmas” during a 1939 parade in Boston.

  • George Rinhart via Getty Images
    Pennsylvania Station in New York adorned with Christmas decorations.

  • Orlando via Getty Images
    A boy distributes presents to his family in the 1950s.

  • Evans via Getty Images
    Traditional Philippino Christmas decorations hanging over the streets in the 1950s.

  • Keystone-France via Getty Images
    A “modern” Christmas tree display in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

  • Andreas Feininger via Getty Images
    Christmas decorations at Rockefeller Plaza in 1949. 

  • Vecchio via Getty Images
    An inmate at New York’s Rikers Island jail painting a huge Santa Claus on a wall in 1955.

  • Nina Leen via Getty Images
    Rockefeller Christmas tree lit up at night in New York City in 1940.

  • Hulton Deutsch via Getty Images
    Men fasten globes to one of the large Christmas lanterns ready to be erected in Regent Street in London. 

  • Daily Herald Archive via Getty Images
    Father Christmas with page boys around a Christmas tree in 1934.

  • Bettmann via Getty Images
    Santa Claus is surrounded by scantily clad movie stars in Hollywood, California, in 1946, as his sleigh moves down “Santa Claus Lane.”

  • Keystone-France via Getty Images
    A house with Christmas decorations in Queens, New York.

  • Bettmann via Getty Images
    A young boy looks on in wonder as his model train moves around the track in this undated photograph.

  • J. A. Hampton via Getty Images
     A giant Christmas cracker containing an Austin car on show in a Wanstead motor depot in 1929. 

  • Underwood Archives via Getty Images
    Santa Claus carrying a bag full of presents in the late 1940s.

  • Bettmann via Getty Images
    The home of Chicago Tribune publisher Robert R. McCormick in Wheaton, Illinois. There is snow on the ground and lights in the trees.

  • Lambert via Getty Images
    A boy and his father inspect a small evergreen tree during a Christmas tree hunt in a snowy field in 1955.

  • George Rinhart via Getty Images
    Christmas trees inside Grand Central Terminal.

  • Kirn Vintage Stock via Getty Images
    A little girl stands by s Christmas tree clutching her doll in the 1950s.

  • Bettmann via Getty Images
    Brussels prepares for its 1949 Christmas display, with millions of colored bulbs decorating the main streets.

  • MCNY/Gottscho-Schleisner via Getty Images
    A Christmas tree in a dining room at Parkside Hotel in New York City in 1931.

  • Orlando via Getty Images
    Car headlights add extra ribbons of light to the Christmas decorations and the festive “sugar cane” streetlamps of 1950s Washington.

  • Bettmann via Getty Images
    Mary Pickford, assisted by little Johanna Randall (whom she is holding) and Muriel Wisdom, keeps up a Hollywood tradition in 1937 by trimming the first outdoor Christmas tree in Beverly Hills, California. Pickford was then the honorary chairman of the Holiday Beautification movement, which created the pre-holiday activities of the movie colony when she began to trim the tree.

  • Sherman via Getty Images
    People lined up on Wall Street in New York City to post their Christmas cards and packages at a huge mailbox.

  • Courtesy David Lohr
    A boy’s first encounter with Santa in Erie County, Pennsylvania, in 1975.

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