Retro Crimbo 2015: fifty fantastic seasonal snaps

I’ll be (phoning) home for Christmas: E.T. remained hugely popular throughout the second half of 1982, not least at Christmas – racing away to become global cinema’s then all-time box-office champ

.

We live in the age of the selfie, peeps – there’s no getting away from it. An era when sometimes marvellous, often personal moments in time are captured at rather odd angles with elongated arms stretching away from the image’s edge towards the body of one of the photographees. Don’t get me wrong, some selfies are inspired, but rarely by design and usually for their hilarity – and celebrity selfies too often seem to smack of smugness and shameless self promotion (especially if posted on social media).

But just what has this Scrooge-like curmudgeonly diatribe got to do with Christmas and this very post, you may ask? Good question. The answer, my friends, is that back in the days of lore snaps captured of celebrities at this most wonderful time of the year tended, by comparison to those of today, to record a fundamentally more appealing, nay can’t-tear-your-eyes-away quality; a starriness, I guess. Not least because a fair number of them were deliberately posed and so nicely designed, containing none of that need for social media-influenced immediacy. In short, they were (and are) timeless. Just like – oh, you lucky merry muckers of mine – the half-century of festive fancies that follow below. Merry Christmas…!

.

.

HOVER OVER, CLICK ON or OPEN IN A NEW WINDOW the images for information

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. 

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.