Maine Memory Network

This photograph shows the 2nd Maine regiment (1861-1863) encamped on Christmas day, 1861. The encampment was at Hall's Hill near Yorktown, Virginia.

A broadside announced the publication of the Seaside Oracle's Christmas supplement in about 1872.

Joseph Wood, a Wiscasset printer, published the newspaper from January 1869 until September 1876, when he moved it to Bath. He later became editor of the Maine Coast Cottager.

The caption for this photo in the Saturday, December 11, 1926 Portland Evening Express read, "The Evening Express Santa Claus with his reindeer team will come to town Monday. A staff photographer today met the jovial saint some distance to the North and snapped his picture for the hundreds of Portland children who will soon see him."

Santa and his four reindeer drove up and down Congress Street in daytime hours once a day for a week to meet children and hear their Christmas wishes.

This photograph of Santa Claus and several children appeared in the Portland Evening Express on December 15, 1926 as part of a plea for readers to assist the Evening Express Christmas Happiness Campaign.

Letter carriers from the Portland Post Office with their Christmas loads.

The carriers are, from left, George M. Fernald, William P. Prinn, John E. Reidy, and Arthur L. Huff.

A U.S. Post Office mail delivery truck, loaded with holiday mail at Christmas time in 1926 in Portland.

Santa Claus headquarters, outside the Portland YWCA at 120 Free Street in Portland in 1926.

Portland Police officers, from left, Charles Dolan, Sgt. William F. Long, William Skerrett, and Thomas Bruns, help the Evening Express Christmas Happiness Campaign for needy children in Portland in 1926.

View of interior of the Baptist Church in Stockholm decorated for Christmas.

The Bar Harbor Fire Department collected refurbished toys to distribute at Christmastime.

The photograph was taken in December in the early 1950s with both the Presque Isle Police and Fire stations decorated.

Nighttime view of Market Square in Houlton lit for the holidays.

The Houlton and Temple theaters are visible. The 1951 Betty Grable movie, "Meet Me at the Show," was at the Houlton Theater.

!n 1959, the first national Christmas tree to come from east of the Mississippi River was shipped from Presque Isle on two Bangor and Aroostook Railroad flat cars.

Seventy feet tall and weighing approximately three tons, the tree traveled to Washington by courtesy of the Bangor and Aroostook, Maine Central, Boston and Maine, Delaware and Hudson, and Pennsylvania railroads.

President Eisenhower lit the tree on the south lawn of the White House on December 23, 1959. Bangor and Aroostook Railroad's magazine, "Maine Line," v. 8 #1, pp. 9-10.

Photograph shows a Christmas tree at the White House in Washington, D.C., that was obtained from the Alice Kimball property on the Parsons Road in Presque Isle. The 70-foot white pine was decorated with 3,800 lights.

Maine Farmers Exchange 10-pound holiday potato bag.

In the 1940s potato farmers started packaging their potatoes in distinctive bags. The wide variety of bags illustrates the strong interest in distinctive marketing efforts that is still evident today.

Workers Bruce Grass, left, and Joey Smith, right, at the Noyes Tree Farm in Franklin helped truck driver Marshall Pryce of Mattapoisette, Massachusetts, load a specially made 72-inch Christmas wreath onto his truck. The wreath was to be used by the New Bedford Library, Massachusetts, in a cable TV Mitch Miller sing-along Christmas program. The wreath was specially ordered by the New Bedford Institution of Savings for the library program.