For children, one of the great pleasures of the holiday season was sharing the fun and excitement with your brothers and sisters.

For one adventure, they would take a ride on a horse-drawn trolley car to the main shopping district of their city.

They would make their way through the crowds of shoppers to the large department stores where you could gaze for hours at the beautiful Christmas scenes in the store window. A special one would be of Santa Clause flying the night sky with his toy-laden sleigh.

The holidays were also the season for entertaining, and wealthy Victorians competed with one another to see who could give the most elegant dinner parties.

The decade of the 1890's became known as the "Gay Nineties" because of the endless rounds of dinner parties and other forms of entertainment enjoyed by wealthy Americans.