On Christmas day, it's the perfect time to see what an old-fashioned American holiday season looked like.
The Boston Public Library has a collection of photos by Leslie Jones, a photographer who documented daily life in the city for The Boston Herald-Traveler for 39 years.
"In those 39 years, Jones left a comprehensive visual portrait of Boston’s people, events and built environment," curators at the Boston Public Library's print department wrote in an email to Business Insider. "He had an eye for whimsy as well as an ability to capture the pathos of the human condition."
A handful of the 37,000 Jones negatives owned by the BPL chronicled Christmastime in Beantown. Jones was born in 1886 and his Christmas photos of Boston largely come from the 1950s with a few from the '30s and one very early shot from 1915.
Allen & Co. Fruit and Produce selling Christmas Trees, 1930.
Selling wreaths at Quincy Market in downtown Boston, 1954.
Boston City Hall decked for the holidays, 1954.
The sign on another entrance to Boston City Hall called for "A Happy, A Holy, A Joyous Christmas To All," 1954.
Trinity Church in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, 1954.
St. Francis Seminary in Boston, taken somewhere between 1936 and 1954.
The Mural Lounge in Kenmore Square had a display complete with Santa and his sleigh, 1939.
Houghton & Dutton department store on Washington Street in downtown Boston, 1915.
Gilchrist's flagship store in downtown Boston, 1950.
Filene's department store in the Downtown Crossing shopping district in Boston, 1954.
Jordan Marsh department store in downtown Boston went with a nativity scene, 1954.
Secular decorations on another entrance of the Jordan Marsh department store, 1954.
RH White department store in downtown Boston, 1952.
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