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Announcement, October 30, 2012
After years of acting, performing music, and collecting and writing about his favorite Christmas traditions, "Papa" Ted Althof has succumbed to illness, on October 29, 2012. A Celebration of his life and work is planned, although we have no details yet.
When he realized his was ill, Ted worked with CardboardChristmas.com to establish this archive of his "Putz house" site, which will, hopefully, continue to inform, encourage, and bless other lovers of Christmas tradition for years to come. In the coming weeks, we will be making necessary adjustments (such as changing the contact information), but our primary goal is to keep the information on this site as useful and available as Ted always intended it to be.
In the meantime we appreciate Ted's diligence, his generousity, and his love of Christmas traditions. We also pray for those close to him who showed so much support in his last months.
If you need to contact us before we get everything switched over, please use the Cardboard Christmas contact page.
To paraphrase Dickens, Ted was a man who:
honored Christmas in his heart, and tried to keep it all the year.
I don't think there is a more fitting tribute than to follow his example.
Paul Race, Howard Lamey, Maria Cudequest, Nan Corby, Jack Ahearn, and the rest of the CardboardChristmas.com family.
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The person who used to renew Ted's domain name for him neglected to do that several months ago, and the URL PapaTedsPlace.com expired. The fellow had promised Ted that HE would keep Ted's original site active at Ted's original URL indefinitely, which is one of the reasons Ted didn't transfer ownership of the domain name at the same time he authorized us building an archive of his site.
A year later, the site name has expired, and the domain name registrar has registered it for their own use because it still gets a lot of hits. Since they aren't interested in providing content, they have an automated system that plugs random ads on the page. As long as they make a few dollars a month from people who click the old URL and decide to click on one of the ad listings, they'll keep the name registered indefinitely.
I could probably pay about 2,000 and buy it outright. Based on the income stream I get from CardboardChristmas.com already, the payback would happen in, er, never.
Sorry for any inconvenience. Once again I'm glad we DID get the pages when we had a chance.
Enjoy your hobbies, enjoy your holidays, and have a great rest of the year, all,
Paul
