The Glassnap girls always had an extra good Christmas with plenty of presents under the tree.  Their mother, Estella, had been raised in such poor circumstances after the death of their father that they never had much for the holiday.  Estella made up for it with her own family.  She also took great delight in having a lovely tree.  When Joyce was little, her parents would take her to De Pere for Christmas Eve while Grandma Glassnap would stay behind to trim the tree.  She always closed the door to the room so the tree was hidden until Christmas morning.  After Elaine Dawn was born, Joyce got to play Santa Clause by trimming the tree after they left.  Here are two Glassnap Christmas tree photos from two different time periods.  The top left of Elaine Dawn was in the Fair Street home in Appleton about 1951 or 1952.  The lower right picture was taken in their Chain Drive home in the town  of Menasha in 1971.  That was the only Christmas that Joyce (Glassnap) Krieser and her husband, Carl, spent in Wisconsin after the birth of their two sons, Kurt and Eric.  The weather at that time of the year was always so unpredictable that it was too risky to chance getting stranded in the cold with the children.  Naturally, they had trouble with frozen gas lines on the way home, so Joyce wasn’t home for Christmas again until she and Kurt went up when her father lost the Chain Drive house and was evicted.  That was an emergency so they had to go.  Notice the striking difference in the styles during the 20 year time period of these two photos.  Interesting.