This year’s centennial of Palm Beach County prompted us to look back on Christmastime at the close of the 19th century, courtesy of the Dec. 21, 1899, Weekly Lake Worth News, forerunner to the Palm Beach Daily News (“The Shiny Sheet”).
You’ll no doubt recognize some pioneer families.
The menu for Christmas dinner at Schmit’s Cafe: Port Orange oysters, clam chowder a la Newport, baked bluefish a la Delmonico, roast turkey with oyster dressing and cranberry sauce, Salme of duck a la financiere, Kalamazoo celery, sliced tomatoes, potatoes, new green peas, new string beans.
Homemade mince pie, lemon ice cream, assorted cakes, and claret punch a la Beach Club.
A large new bell for the M.E. church had arrived at the train depot “and will soon be in its steeple and ready to peal.”
William Lanehart returned after burying his wife in Albany, N.Y.
The Palm Beach Inn was to open for its fourth season that weekend.
M.E. Gruber’s offered Palm Beach souvenirs in plain and colored china, made to order in Austria.
Henry J. Burkhardt had “quite a crowd” to mark his 10th birthday; “they all had an uproarious time.”
“Messrs.” J.R. and E.R. Bradley went north and would return around Jan. 1.
Lake Worth had set up a “free reading room” and planned to strong-arm the city’s business community for financial support.
“We believe that a town lot which can be bought today for three or four hundred dollars, will be double that figure within two years.”
The city’s telephone system now was connected to the rail depot, telegraph office, city water works, fire house, and “all the telephones at the Flagler hotels on the east side.”
And the newspaper itself had just gotten new presses, run by a new fangled “gasolene engine.”
Merry Christmas!
This photo taken in 1945 shows E.R. Bradley in a bicycle-powered white wicker carriage, once a popular form of transportation in Palm Beach. Bradley died in 1946.
Tags: Christmas
By Michelle Quigley
The first West Palm Beach Holiday Boat Parade was in 1979, and by 1981 the parade included dozens of boats and drew a crowd of 60,000 spectators. In 1988 the boat parade joined HolidayFest and the Festival of Trees to become a three-day food, arts and entertainment festival complete with Clydesdale horses, water ski shows, and performances by Chuck Mangione and The Turtles.
Bad economic times forced the city to cut HolidayFest and the boat parade from the budget in 1991, but private donors stepped in to save the parade. On December 14, 1991, some 40,000 spectators lined the Intracoastal Waterway as thirty-four boats cruised by, including winner James N. Lonergan’s 36-foot Out & About with its 8,500 Christmas lights, Howard Warshauer’s 46-foot sailboat Kismet with its huge pink flamingo, and the Lighthouse for the Blind entry pulling a dingy carrying a floodlit Santa Claus. The $30,000 raised by donors also paid for a 15-minute fireworks display.
Budget woes again prompted the city to cancel the parade in 1993. But the following year the boat parade was reincarnated as the Holiday Boat Parade of the Palm Beaches, and the tradition continues. The 2009 parade was an official Palm Beach County centennial event with a fireworks display and more than 100,000 spectators.
Enjoy these Palm Beach Post file photos of the West Palm Beach boat parade and the Holiday Boat Parade of the Palm Beaches. You can upload your pictures of holidays gone by to our photo gallery.
Decorators attach porpoise decor to a boat in preparation for West Palm Beach’s Third Annual Boat Parade on December 21, 1982.
Fireworks over Palm Harbor Marina in West Palm Beach kick off the 12th annual Holiday Boat Parade. More than 40,000 people lined Flagler Drive to watch the parade that almost wasn’t.
A brightly decorated boat makes its way down the Intercoastal Waterway during the 2009 Palm Beach Holiday Boat Parade.
Tags: boats, Christmas
By Michelle Quigley
Before there was a 100-foot tall Christmas tree in Delray Beach, there was the World’s Largest Christmas Tree at the National Enquirer headquarters in Lantana.
A 1988 Palm Beach Post story describes how Enquirer owner Generoso Pope began the 18-year tradition:
Pope, who died of a heart attack Oct. 2, 1988, inadvertently started the holiday tradition in 1971 after moving the tabloid to Lantana from Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
Missing Northern Christmas traditions, Pope ordered a 45-foot tree for employees. But motorists on Dixie Highway soon noticed the tree and started jamming the roads around the Enquirer for a peek.
Over the years, as the crowds grew, so did the height of the tree and the size of the Spectacle of Lights. When the tree reached 117 feet in 1979, it was listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as the “World’s Largest Decorated Christmas Tree.”
The last National Enquirer Christmas tree was lighted on December 16, 1988. The tree began its life in Beaver Creek, Ore., where it grew to be 126 feet tall before it was stripped of its branches to make the 3,600 mile train trip to Lantana where it was reassembled and decorated with more than 15,000 lights, 1,200 colored basketball-sized balls, 250 red bows, 180 3-foot candy canes and snowflakes, topped with a 6-foot lighted silver star, and surrounded by elaborate animated displays and model trains.
The tree is lifted out of the boxcar.
A worker directs the crane operator while other volunteers lift bundles of limbs.
Reflections of the tree just after its lighting in 1981.
This castle was part of the elaborate toy train display.
Palm Beach Post file photos
Tags: Christmas
