Silent movies - Rozhdestvo obitateley lesa

Huh? Yeah, maybe you don't speak Russian, either.
From the page where I found this recommendation "This is one of my favorite vintage holiday films, a strange little gem from the great Russian [his parents were Polish] stop-motion animator Ladislas Starevich." (There are different spellings depending on the country.)
The English title of this "strange little gem" from 1913 is "The Insects' Christmas" and there you have your plot.

The Father Christmas ornament
comes alive and climbs off the tree.

Little break, that was exhausting.

Father Christmas has invited some
insects - beetles, a grasshopper (although
the English intertitle calls her Miss
Dragonfly), and a frog (I guess the
beetles are too big for him to eat), and
now he trims a tree for them.

The ornaments are also gifts and
everyone gets one of them.

Fun for everyone - sliding down
the snowy hill!

One of the beetles and the frog tussle
for the cracker. When it comes apart,
they tumble backwards and the
frog falls into the hole where
he's staying for the winter.

The cloud rising from the cracker
spells "Froehliche Weinachten"
(no idea why it's in German, also
- because I'm a nitpicker - there's
an h missing in "Weihnachten") ...
"Merry Christmas"!

Father Christmas returns to his tree.

It's really a delightful little film. Isn't it nice of Father Christmas to get off his tree to give his friends a nice Christmas, too? I don't even want to think about how he got to the forest!


Thank you to Lea for recommending it in "7 Silent Christmas Movies (From the Horse-And-Buggy Era)" on Silent-ology, December 21, 2016!

Silent movies - Santa Claus

Children have always wanted to know what Santa Claus is doing all year round.
There are different theories. He only gets one day of vacation, December 25th. Santa usually has a beach vacation in summer. He enjoys camping and singing Christmas carols at bonfires. He gets three weeks to relax or to go travelling right after Christmas. What is the right answer?
Let's see what "Santa Claus" from 1925 has to say - or rather show - on this matter (and please don't ask me why I watched the sepia version, I didn't even notice until writing this).

Two children manage to catch Santa when he comes down their chimney and ask him that important question, and although he's on such a tight schedule during this night, he finds the time to tell them.

He starts describing where he lives in the North, "a fairy kingdom bound by vast glaciers, towering ice crags and endless fields of snow", shaken by the North Wind, whose "borders are guarded by Goblins of the deep" (a huddle of walrus in the sea) while "the Monarch of the Arctic watchfully patrols my domain" (a polar bear running and swimming).
Back in his "warm snow castle" built out of snow blocks, he quickly checks toy production and then sits down to work on the naughty and nice list.
Bad news for Billy Smith, because when Santa watched him through his weirdly long telescope, he harrassed a blind street violinist by cutting the leash of his dog which drove some kids to knocking over the violinist's cup for coins. That got Billy a good shaking from Bobby Harrison and his name being scratched out by Santa while Bobby gets an entry for "a live pony and cart".

Next up another product test - no worries, the model train is perfect craftmanship and runs wonderfully!

Then Santa tells the children about training his reindeer and how he found Blitzen as a baby in the snow.
Saturdays are holidays, on those occasions he goes visit the Inuit (of course white people still called them Eskimos back then).
Once a year he gets a visit from the Easter Bunny (you see Santa sitting outside with a bunny on his lap) for a long consultation about which children deserve a nice Easter basket, and a white ptarmigan brings all the letters that children write to him.
He also meets up with fur-clad Jack Frost who makes the snow and ice for the old-fashioned Christmas Santa demands. This is Jack using his magic star wand to create the beautiful ice ferns and flowers on windows in the cities.

On Christmas Eve, Santa climbs into his (amazingly small) sleigh and brings gifts round the world. The Inuit children are the first ones to get theirs.

He also has a warning, though. If you have a chimney that isn't cared for, he can't get into it which means the children in that house don't get gifts (at that point der Dekan urged me to check our chimney while Gundel, several years older and wiser, just looked at him smugly).
Then he says goodbye to the children and heads back to the North where he and his helpers have a well-deserved rest.

The film starts with saying "Mr. and Mrs. F. E. Kleinschmidt present a fantasy actually filmed in Northern Alaska" and ends with "Merry Christmas to all - and to all a Good Night. The End. Mr. and Mrs. F. E. Kleinschmidt".
Who are the Kleinschmidts?

German-born Frank Emil Kleinschmidt emigrated to the USA at the age of 22 and went to Alaska four years later where he raised three daughters with his first wife.
He was an explorer, captain of a merchant freighter and an official photographer and cinematograph for the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War, he was even arrested and imprisoned for espionage.
He made documentaries of Arctic hunts and expeditions since 1909, for example during hunting tours for rich tourists, and he also returned to Alaska after the war.
In this case, Mrs. Kleinschmidt is his second wife Teresa Evelyn Fillion, called Essie, who went on expedition with him.

So it's not surprising that parts of "Santa Claus" make you think of one of those documentaries showing people, animals, and the landscape of the North.
Maybe he used some of the material from them or they just gave him the idea to take a Santa Claus costume along for the outdoor shots sometime and then do the studio shots with a different Santa who reminds me a bit of vintage creepy Santa and crying children photos. It's probably the beard whose look has changed a lot in modern times.
According to Wikipedia, Kleinschmidt toured the US around Christmas showing the film and I bet children were shocked by the fact that Santa spent a lot of time watching them through his telescope.
I wonder how much Essie contributed to the film.

The mixture of real Alaska and Christmas narrative makes this a rather charming watch.
By the way, did I fail to mention the tiny fairies dancing and singing Santa to sleep? 
 

Sources:

1. Lea Stans: Obscure Films: "Santa Claus" (1925). On: Silent-ology, December 24, 2020
2. Stella Dagna: Captain F.E. Kleinschmidt's Arctic Hunt. On: Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 36, Pordenone, 30 September | 7 October 2017
3. Frank E. Kleinschmidt on Wikipedia
4. Margaret I. MacDonald: Capt. F. E. Kleinschmidt and His Sojourn Among the Animals Peculiar to Northern Climes. In: Moving Picture News 5, 1912, 14, pages 18 - 19 (via The Internet Archive)
5. Captain Frank Emil Kleinschmidt on Geni
6. Frank Emil Kleinschmidt on Find A Grave

4 x Jack

To some people, San Francisco means the Golden Gate Bridge, the Painted Ladies, Fisherman's Wharf, cable cars, and the Fairmont - just the first few things that popped into my head - but when we first made it to the USA, to the ex and me it also meant FAO Schwarz whose connection to Steiff was famous among collectors thanks to some special editions.
On our first visit there, we didn't have that much time which was probably better for our bank account. Through FAO Schwarz we got in contact with a lady who had done some Steiff repair jobs for them, and when we came to San Francisco some years later, we went there again, with the lady who had by now become a good friend.
Oh boy, we were like kids in a toy store. Wait, we actually were in a toy store ... Okay, we were big kids for sure. We really tried to be good, but you know how it goes sometimes.

Of course we had expected to buy some Steiff, but then we also came across Jack, four to be precise, and couldn't resist.
It was a set of four Jack Skellingtons from "The Nightmare Before Christmas" - one in his striped suit, one as the scarecrow with the pumpkin head, one in his pyjamas (his book is in a different cabinet right now, one of my Kens is reading it to my Skippers and other family members ;-)), and one as "Sandy Claws" in a Santa suit.
For those who have never seen the film ... Jack, the Pumpkin King, is the king of Halloween Town and he's bored and struggling from having to prepare Halloween over and over. By chance, he discovers the door to Christmas Town in the woods and he's overwhelmed with joy about this wonderful holiday. Despite the warnings of Sally, the rag doll who is in love with him, Jack decides to have Santa kidnapped, so he can take his role. He includes all the inhabitants of Halloween Town to prepare Christmas in their own style.
Things don't quite work out the way he had hoped, though. Children and parents are shocked by gifts of shrunken heads and monstrosities and the military is called in to shoot Jack down.
Meanwhile the little monsters tasked with the kidnapping by Jack have taken Santa to their superior Oogie Boogie, a bogeyman playing with Santa's life - and Sally's because she has tried to resuce Santa.
Jack gets shot down and is depressed about his failure for a bit, but then he finds this is giving him great new ideas for next Halloween. He returns home and rescues Santa and Sally by defeating Oogie who loses his sacklike shell and falls apart into a load of bugs.
Santa hurries to save Christmas, but also lets it snow in Halloween Town to show Jack he has forgiven him.
The film ends by Jack and Sally finally declaring their love for one another.

Here's a confession, the movie is not on my regular Christmas watch list. Although I'm fine with musicals in general and really love the songs "Jack's Lament" and "What's This?", it's a bit much singing for me here for a movie running only 76 minutes (I can't watch "Frozen" for the same reason, but that's a different story).
So I only watch it every few years and this year it was time for that again.
I'm totally in love with Jack, however.
I even designed a bracelet with him, but it was more fun to hang him on my wall than leave him in a jewelry box or drawer.

It has been a long time running joke with a US friend of mine that I should send it to her. I just can't part with him, but made a little something for her instead, a tiny beaded bottle.

My four Jacks are sitting behind glass at the moment, but I'm thinking I should put them on one of the cabinets der Dekan can't get to. They would look pretty cool up there.
I took them out for a photo shoot and found that Santa Jack had a dislocated arm, probably from tree hugging. Luckily, it was easy enough to snap back in.

Tree hugging? Well, when I decided to buy a little tree because Ponder was old enough to be a good boy around it, my sister suggested making Santa Jack the topper. I loved the idea and Jack protected the tree for years. See how excited he was to say hello to Ponder, and Ponder, despite being the occasional ornamentnapper, never did anything to Jack. I miss my big boy so much.

I'm sure that in about 30 or 40 years Gundel and der Dekan will have become calm enough to be as nice to the tree as Ponder was.
What do you think my chances are for that to be happening?
At the moment my bet is on 0% because der Dekan has been jumping around and into the tree for almost an hour now!