Merry Christmas from 1918

A Merry Christmas from a hundred years ago. Funny how times have changed. It's hard to imagine a card shop or mega-mart stocking war-themed Christmas cards nowadays. Sure, you'll find the requisite patriotic one here and there (still rare), but actually mentioning an ongoing conflict? I can't imagine it. Maybe that's just the view from a generation privileged enough to have the choice not to experience any of the ongoing armed conflicts. These are different days.

So, Merry Christmas everyone everywhere. Put on the Bing Crosby or Judy Garland version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and really listen to the lyrics. Understand that it's a song written to those who are far away, fighting a war that seems endless...understand the singer doesn't know if they'll ever see their loved one again. May we all have a Merry Little Christmas...if the fates allow.

Merry Christmas

As 2017 draws to an end here's wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas...and I'm also hoping you're not confronted by a pudding monster anytime in the near future. If you're inclined toward the Victorian, you might consider making a traditional Christmas pudding yourself.

The Years Without a Santa Clause: Soft Lite Lenses (1944)

What says Christmas more than a pair of drugstore cheaters? Yep, buy cheap non-prescription glasses for granny, that'll go over like a sack of coal. Apparently they were big once, they had offices in New York, Toronto, and London and now they're gone from the face of the Earth. Maybe they only serve elves?

The Years Without a Santa: BVD Pajamas (1943)

1943 and Santa's disposed with the jeeps and army helmets, stopped mentioning the war, and started selling underwear. Things are grim folks. Still, I dig the paisley jammies. The guy in tan looks like a Star Trek extra.

The Years Without a Santa - Big Yank (1944)

Now Santa's gone all lumberjack. It's like the guy on the Brawny paper towel package put on a Santa mask and hat. And the message, well nothing to do with the holiday. No product pimping. No encouragement to buy. Just...the war - always the war.

I've started to miss those Whitman ads. Chocolate fell victim to rationing along with bacon, rubber, gasoline, and new cars. Everything became preserve, reuses, and recycle. Everything was channeling into the war effort.

The Years without a Santa: Camel Cigarettes (1943)

Prince Albert in a Can? Santa's back to selling monkeys for your back. Now in the nice gingerbread cancer ward style.

The Years Without a Santa: Pennsylvania Railroad (1943)

Before the war the rich could board a Constellation or Clipper for exotic locals but for the average Joe and Jane it was trains and automobiles and the occasional ocean liner. War changed all that. The skies (and seas for that fact) weren't friendly and even if they were wartime rationing would have curtailed non-military travel.

Still, a the December 1943 issue of Life Magazine Pennsylvania Railroad ran this ad touting its war-effort tonnage. I've started calling this sort of ad "patriotism banking", the hope that touting a company's patriotism would equal dollars in the post-war economy.

So this Christmas, while Aunt Martha is alone on the coast instead of safe in the bosom of her family, just think of all those tanks that made the trip she couldn't.

The Years Without a Santa: Stromberg-Carlson (1943)

1943 and reality has come home for Christmas. This realization is shown eloquently in this ad for Stromberg-Carlson radios, morphing from pre-war ignorant bliss to early days "we're going to show 'em how it's done" bravado, to the long bloody trail to the war's end. It is interesting that Stromberg-Calrson hasn't de-German-ed their name, though.

The Years Without a Santa: Whitman Sampler (1942)

A spot of color from 1942! While pouring over ads from that year, this one practically screams at you for its use of color. No black-and-white and grim Santa Clause, just a box of chocolates and some holly. In fact the only mention of the war is the admonition not to forget those in the service. Apparently the war hadn't come home to the Whitman company. That would change when sugar rationing hit the US. But, for the moment, they still were selling their samplers in the same way they'd always sold them.

The Years Without a Santa: Old Gold (1942)

Another wartime Santa, this time riding a jeep through the sky in spite of gasoline and rubber rationing. Jeep Santa distributes Old Gold Cigarettes and...books...as he flies through the sky. Bad being beaned by a carton of smokes, worse by a dictionary.

The Years Without a Santa: Roadmaster Bicycles (1942)

I had a Roadmaster bike as a kid. It was what hipsters would call a 'fixie' - no gears and pedal brakes. I rode that bike all over, it was my first means of freedom. I would have been out of luck in 1942, though, because The Cleveland Welding Company, makers of Roadmaster bikes, was a vital war industry and had switched production. A decade after the war they'd be bought out by AMF and eventually become known for shoddy, low-quality bicycles.

The ad features a somewhat less war-mad Santa. He's not shoving cigarettes or bayonets into the kid's hands. I guess that makes him more the jolly old elf we know nowadays.

A Wartime Santa

Remember when a carton of cigarettes was a good Christmas gift? Me either. I certainly remember a lot of smoking during the holidays. I remember coming home with smoker's cough from a long Christmas Eve at the grandparents' house at the age of nine. I can remember lying on my back by the Christmas tree, breathing the cool, clear air, and staring up at the fog-bank of second-hand smoke that hung just a few feet above where I lay. It was like being in an episode of Emergency, only without sirens or Randolph Mantooth.

Anyway, the ad's from 1942 - gasoline rationing had just started, the US had just bombed Italy, and there was a long and bloody road ahead before peace would return. But light up boys, you may be dead tomorrow so why worry about a little lung cancer?

The Funnies: World War I Santa (1917)

"What's the matter with having Santa Claus make his entrance in one of them tanks?"

An odd combination this Monday. Santa arriving on a tank is a byproduct of World War I and the emergence of all things mechanized. Nothing jolly about being a "tanker" in the Great War. Their insides were cramped, deafeningly loud, internal temperatures frequently rose above 120 degrees, and their armor wouldn't turn German artillery. Nothing merry about having a German '88 detonate your fuel and armaments while you're sealed inside, I'll wager.

Gifts for the Good Little Elves - The 1937 Zenith Long Distance Radio

It's amazing how time gets away. One moment it's spring and the next minute the candle of the year has burned down to a stub and the room is getting dark. It's been a tough and eventful summer for me and the unfortunate result is my ignoring my blog while I dealt with more pressing matters. Hopefully I'll have a little more time to post now and I can get back to posting regularly. And what better way to start than delving into the stacks of musty magazines for some time-worn tat that would make good gifts for the lover of all things vintage? The item on today's gift list is the ultra-modern Zenith Long Distance Radio from 1937.

Check out those Art Deco lines! As the Zephyr name suggests, this is a radio that looks like it's moving at 100 mph even when it's sitting in your living room. It's the embodiment of Art Deco's ethos of mass manufacturing as art - a piece of furniture that rolled out of a factory with style. Today every car looks pretty much like every other car, every toaster looks like every other toaster, and furniture has become practically disposable press-board cutouts.

I've come across a few similar radios in antique stores, but they're usually in really rough shape or unbelievably expensive (as of the writing of this  eBay had one listed at $2000+). Also it's interesting to know that, though Zenith's ad touts console radios as old and out, their Zephyr range included console radios. Maybe they were hedging their bet. Still, nothing add a certain flare to the study like a nice vintage radio end table sitting next to the Art Deco chair with a deco cradle phone nearby.

The Funnies - Handy John (1914)

"You may be weak on literature, John, but when it comes to Christmas shopping you're a wonder."

Life Magazine, December 3, 1914

The Funnies - Special Christmas Eve Edition

Cartoonist Jay Norwood "Ding" Darling expressing the Christmas sentiment 100 years ago for the Des Moines Register and Leader. Ding was a multi-talented fellow and important in the conservation movement as well as being an editorial cartoonist, he helped initiate the Federal Duck Stamp program, designed its first stamp, and headed up the US Biological Survey (the forerunner of the Fish and Wildlife Service) for Franklin D. Roosevelt. The man's got a Pulitzer, a National Audubon Society Award, and a nature preserve named after him...who says doodling won't get you anywhere?

Good For Nothing Gifts...According to Life Magazine

A little article on what the editors of Life Magazine considered worthless gifts back in 1953.

 

The Yellow Pages Christmas Tree

Remember making telephone book Christmas trees in grade school? I don't have a lot of positive memories about my formative years in the Indiana Public School System - they mostly consist of being bullied, berated, and embarrassed at every turn for some shortcoming or another. One thing I do remember is folding thousands of pages of telephone books to make holiday Christmas trees during the run-up to Christmas break. Now there aren't even phone books to fold, so I wonder what pointlessly time consuming activity kindergarten teachers employ now?

The Christmas List - Sunbeam

Normally this one would show up on the Naughty List, but there's a specific piece of equipment in this ad that I just acquired. The Sunbeam deep fryer or as I like to call it - the Sunbeam Grease Spreader. Mine is missing the mesh basket, still when it reaches temperature it's greasing machine. Looks like a part from a 50's jet too.

The Christmas List - Bolex

The camera with a name that sounds like a swearing Brit, Bolex. I don't think a six-year-old has ever uttered the phrase, "ooh...Daddy got a Bolex!", at least not without getting his mouth washed out with soap. Anyway, now that 8mm manual cameras are trendily outdated, I'm imagining they're utterly craveable and therefor a good add to your hipster's stocking. For me, I'll always remember discovering mom's 8mm Kodak and attempting to make a Ray Harryhausen-esque stop-motion film in the back yard with Star Wars action figures as props. Occasionally we'd get a burst of what looked like movement, but mostly we got over-exposed film and pictures of our fingers.