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A Christmas Picture Book: Season Four

Note: This pictorial eBook contains large images and is designed to be viewed on an actual tablet. It can also be viewed on a Mac with iBooks. Viewing it on a tablet or a Mac will allow the images to be enlarged and explored.

For a few years now, I've been adding tin-figure characters with their tin-figure tales to my mantel village each Christmas. After the holiday -- sometimes way too long after it -- I carefully pack everything and everyone away. And the following year, my little village of antique cardboard houses reappears and the tales continue. Most of the stories are happy ones, because, after all, most people are happy. But as in life, sometimes a deep sadness occurs. Recently the village lost the original inspiration behind it: Ted Althof, a brilliant man who became a mentor not only to me in this hobby but to a host of people around the country and the world who are charmed by the little cardboard collectibles, mostly built in Japan before WWII. It was Ted who gathered what scarce information exists about them and created an irresistible website called "Papa Ted's Place."

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A Loss in the Village

Ted's website is filled with his thoughtful and wistful musings about childhood and Christmas, sprinkled among an astonishing array of vintage cardboard houses. You can spend whole days being enchanted in this online museum; I have a link in the introduction to this eBook that will take you there.. Papa Ted was Papa Christmas to many of us, and he is and will be dearly missed. My 2012 Christmas mantel is devoted to Ted, in fond memory





Download A Christmas Picture Book: Season Four for your tablet PC or Mac