Christmas Memories, page 1
Published in 2009 by Stewart, Tabori & Chang
An imprint of ABRAMS
Text copyright © 2009 by Susan Waggoner
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Waggoner, Susan.
Christmas memories : gifts, activities, fads, and fancies, 1920s–1960s / Susan Waggoner.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-58479-789-0
1. Christmas—United States—History—20th century. 2. United States—Social life and customs—20th century. I. Title.
GT4986.A1W33 2009
394.2663—dc22
2009011411
Editor: Dervla Kelly
Designer: Kay Schuckhart/Blond on Pond
Production Manager: Tina Cameron
115 West 18th Street
New York, NY 10011
www.abramsbooks.com
* * *
THE
20s
JAZZ-AGE JUBILEE
THE
30s
THE BEST OF TIMES IN THE WORST OF TIMES
THE
40s
WAR AND PEACE
THE
50s
HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS
THE
60s
THE HOLLY JOLLY CHRISTMAS
THE 1920s
Jazz-Age Jubilee
Was there ever a decade in America that couldn’t be described as a red-hot firecracker of a time? But the 1920s really lived up to the billing and during that decade Christmas, like everything else in America, began to shimmy and shake. Store windows sparkled and sometimes sang. Bright lights glittered on once-humble Main Streets. Some thought the excess signaled the end of the world. Others saw it as nothing more than the big, booming canvas of America itself.
Christmas in the Melting Pot
The decade that became known for its roar didn’t start out that way. Costs had risen dramatically during World War I, but wages had not. After the war, poor business conditions and a significant decline in the stock market cast a further pall. Christmas of 1920 darkened retailer hearts with that most dreaded of all events—a buyers’ strike. It was hardly an auspicious beginning. Yet, for many—the millions of immigrants who arrived early in the century—the future seemed bright.
On Christmas Eve of 1923, the SS La Savoie hovered just outside New York’s harbor. Among those on board were Rozalia Bujaki and her five children, traveling from Hungary to join their husband and father in Detroit. Richard Bujaki, who heard the story of that night many times as he was growing up, recounts his father’s first glimpse of the New World.
NEW YORK, DECEMBER 24, 1923
In their cabin aboard their steamship, my grandmother gathered her five children around her. My father, who was only seven at the time, watched as his mother opened the New Testament she had brought from home. This was the Christmas Story, printed in Hungarian, and he listened with his brothers and sisters as she read her favorite passages to them. When she finished, she reached into a bag and handed each child a single piece of fresh fruit. My father received an orange and, when nothing more was produced, felt a pang of disappointment. It was Christmas Eve. Like all children, he’d been hoping for a piece of candy. Looking up at his mother, he asked, “Is this all we get for Christmas?”
“No,” his mother answered. “The best is yet to come.”
Bundling up all of her children, she led them outside, onto the deck. In the cold night air, beneath a canopy of stars, she showed them the skyline of New York sparkling on the horizon. For the first time, my father saw the lights of the Woolworth Building, the tallest building in the world.
“Over there,” his mother said, and pointed out the Statue of Liberty to them. “This is going to be your new home. It may be the greatest Christmas present you will ever receive.”
My father wasn’t impressed. He was cold, it was Christmas Eve, and he still wanted a piece of candy. Yet in the years that followed, this became his first and fondest recollection of Christmas in America.
—Richard Bujaki
The Christmas Look,
Twenties Style
All Christmases are a pastiche of old and new, but none so much as those of the 1920s. America, especially in the first part of the decade, was of two minds: one that welcomed a world of accelerating change and one that still craved the comfort of the past. Both yearnings were reflected in the way Christmas looked. Nationwide, people gawked at the brightly lit trees and store windows on Main Street but questioned their appropriateness. Holly-sprigged tissue paper vied with geometrics worthy of Mondrian. On the family tree, drifts of old-fashioned angel hair fought it out with the spangly new gimcrack called tinsel.
Red and green lost the color war to primary colors, metallics, and shades of mint, lavender, robin’s egg, faded rose, and other pastels. It’s no accident that this was the decade that gave us pink poinsettias. Yet even as a distinctly American version of the holiday developed, the yearning for a simpler past continued its backward march—ultimately arriving at a Merrie Olde English–style Yuletide, which had never existed in America. Throughout the decade, the Saturday Evening Post satisfied both yens by alternating covers of dancing Victorians and London-bound mail coaches with Americanized toy shops and Santas.
Tree and Trim
Over the top didn’t exist as a phrase in the 1920s, but if it had it would have aptly described Christmas trees of the era. Unlike later decades, which favored a pyramid-shaped tree tapering to a single point at the top, the Twenties demanded girth. The bigger around the middle the tree was, the better. If a tree grower could have cultivated a perfectly spherical tree, he would have made a fortune. Getting the desired girth often meant buying a tree much taller than the ceiling allowed, a tree that remained too tall even when the bottom branches were trimmed away. So the enterprising homeowner tackled the problem from the top; pictures from the era show trees lopped off where they meet the ceiling, or the uppermost tips bent back.
Although tree lights had existed for some time, few family trees had them. For one thing, lights required electricity, something only about half of the population had. And even those who had electricity often found the lights too expensive—a string of colored lights in the early 1920s cost $3.50 (over $40 in contemporary dollars).
Yet even without lights, trees glittered. Tinsel, previously made of expensive silver, was now affordably mass-produced from inexpensive lead. Lametta garlands, with short, spiky strands bristling from the central wire, were especially popular, and came in shades of silver and gold.
Glass ornaments also added sparkle, though most trees—especially those of the early twenties—had fewer of them than trees of today typically do. Early ornaments had been expensive, with only one or two purchased by a family each year. In the 1880s, Woolworth’s began importing less expensive glass ornaments from Germany, but the idea of a tree laden with balls had yet to take root. Such a tree would have struck many as a bit dull, since vying for space with glass ornaments were elaborate decorations made of paper. Heavyweight, embossed, artistically detailed, and printed in rich colors, these conveyed the sense of dizzying abundance that the era prized. If you examine a photo of a tree from this period, you’ll see a fascinating and multilayered mosaic. Paper ornaments knew no color scheme or season, nor was it uncommon to see seraphim mingling with crosses, lucky horseshoes, flowers, flags, Lady Liberties, harps, high-button shoes, fans, gloves, nosegays, and other motifs.
The finishing touch on the Twenties tree wasn’t a star on top, as is popular today, but what sat beneath the lowest boughs. Although tree stands were available, they were not particularly stable and lacked water reservoirs, so many homeowners made their own arrangements. One of the fads of the time was to build a tiered box, insert the base of the tree in it, drape the box with fabric, and create miniature villages and landscapes in the snowy folds of material. Poring over old photos, we’ve spotted flocks of sheep, trains and trolleys, boats sailing beneath arched bridges, menageries of zebras and lions, ox carts, nativities flanked by camels and palms, and picket-fenced houses with lace curtains visible at the windows. One can only imagine the delight of the children for whom these tiny worlds came alive for a few weeks each year.
WAITING FOR THE TREE
Long after my sister and I were grown, my mother told us what her Christmases had been like growing up in the early 1920s. She told us that their house had pocket doors between the living room and the kitchen, and on Christmas Eve my grandfather would go into the living room, forbid anyone to bother him, and shut the doors behind him. About two hours later, when he opened the doors, the children were clustered there, waiting with impatient excitement. The living room was completely dark except for the tree Grandpa had miraculously snuck in and decorated with real lit candles on it. My mother said that every year, even though she knew what was coming, the candlelit tree was the most surprising, breathtaking thing she had ever seen. She told us this story the last year she was with us. It’s a wonderful memory.
—Mary Ellen Timbs
Around the House
As in all decades, homes of the Twenties dressed up at Christmas and showed off the treasures dear to their owners’ hearts—treasures that often had little practical or monetary value but were beloved nonetheless. One form of decoration wo
Suddenly Santa
One of the most striking new faces of the 1920s was Santa Claus. Of course, a form of Santa had been on the scene for years, a European émigré who was thin, elderly, and somewhat dour. He traveled through the night alone, no reindeer in sight, delivering necessities to the poor and doing his best to remain anonymous. There was nothing even remotely American about him, but, like other immigrants, he changed to fit in. Clement Clarke Moore set things in motion when his poem, A Visit from St. Nicholas (or The Night before Christmas), appeared in a New York newspaper in 1823. Despite the poem’s widespread popularity, many people lacked a clear image of Santa. Television didn’t exist; newspaper and magazine illustrations were limited to black-and-white, or black and white with a single color added. And photography, invariably black-and-white, was of the grainy, murky sort that hardly lent itself to flights of fancy.
But with the new century, magazines began to print their covers in color, and as the century advanced, manufacturers used full-color illustrations to draw attention to their ads. Two American illustrators in particular, J. C. Leyendecker and Norman Rockwell, created the forerunner of the modern Mr. Claus. Both painted numerous Santas in the 1920s, for magazines as well as advertisements. Leyendecker’s vision was a larger-than-life Santa, a man of large girth and undoubtedly high blood pressure, whose face was nearly as red as his suit. Rockwell, who did his first covers for The Saturday Evening Post when Leyendecker was still its leading cover artist, fell into step with the vision. Both men’s Santas had flowing hair and beards, suits trimmed in white fur, and wide, equatorial belts. Both Santas, unlike their European predecessors, operated in a world of children, dispensing toys for all rather than charity for only the poor. Neither Santa was grim in the European sense, yet neither was the carefree Santa that eventually became the American standard. Both Santas were men with a job to do—a happy job, to be sure, but one with enormous responsibilities. Leyendecker’s Santa was deeply wrinkled and could appear harried and even a bit fierce. Rockwell’s Santa was frequently depicted as hatless and balding, a Santa who showed human vulnerabilities like worry and exhaustion.
Yet, harried or hatless, the new Santa was an enormous hit with the public. If they’d had such things back then he surely would have been named one of the decade’s most influential players. For as Santa’s popularity grew, businessmen discovered that Santa had a secret talent: he could sell things. Santa began to appear in more and more ads, grace more and more signs, and to be featured on more and more packaging. Santa could move merchandise, especially merchandise marketed to children, and with each cry of “Ooh, look what Santa brought me!” his status as a mega-icon increased.
Gifts and Greetings of the 1920s
We Wish You a Merry Christmas
Until the 1920s, the Christmas card as we know it—the folded item that arrives in an envelope and fills you with guilt for not yet having sent yours out—was not the norm. Instead, people sent postcards with just enough space on the back to write “Season’s Greetings from Betty Lou and Dave.” Postcards were a model of efficiency. You did not have to labor over what to write to your friends, you did not have to suffer through their accounts of little Tommy putting a frog in mommy’s handbag, and you did not have to spend more than a penny to send one. You got to enjoy the pretty pictures, let your friends know you were thinking of them, and enjoy the fact that they were thinking of you in return. As social systems go, it was darned near perfect.
But as economic conditions improved during the decade, the Christmas postcard began to seem a bit old hat. The big four of American cards and gift wraps—Hallmark, Gibson, American Greetings, and Norcross—had all come into existence between 1905 and 1915, and the competition must have been fierce. So, with customers a bit more financially secure, they turned their focus to cards and envelopes.
Christmas cards had been around since the nineteenth century, but early cards featured such un-Christmassy themes as flowers, wreaths, summer landscapes, lucky horseshoes, and shamrocks. The 1920s took a new direction and gave cards a fresh look by introducing themes that were associated with the winter season or specifically Christmas. Playing out the decade’s penchant of looking both forward and back, cards frequently depicted scenes of a hundred years ago, showing ladies with muffs and bonnets, gentlemen in knee britches, and horse-drawn coaches. Silhouettes were also popular, but a modern touch was added by placing them against pastel landscapes. Art Deco influences abounded, with stylized curves and strong geometrics. None of it was meant to be realistic. It was meant to cheer the soul and delight the eye—and it did. From the middle of the decade on, the folded card became the preferred mailed greeting.
Gifts of the Season
Throughout the 1920s, gift-giving escalated from homemade treats given to a few, to manufactured items given to many. Far from being mere crass consumerism, it was also a useful way to gather up the many strands of human life and activity in America and give people a common, and hopefully joyful, experience. If England had been the capital of Christmas in the nineteenth century, America was making a strong bid to become its capital city in the twentieth. As far away as Japan, schoolchildren studying English were advised to give Christmas gifts as a way of understanding American democracy.
Thanks for the Christmas box. Especially enjoyed the steamed pudding. Mother sent aprons and other kitchen things. This brings Merry Christmas. P.S.: Publisher sent two Venetian glass bottles.
—Willa Cather, letter to a childhood friend, December 27, 1921
The roar that made the decade famous, the roar of money, was barely a whisper at first. Most folks went about their lives as usual, hoping the high inflation of 1920 and the high unemployment of 1921 didn’t get married and have a depression. They didn’t.
One of the great bull markets of all time was getting ready to break out of its pen, and by the end of 1921, those at the top were already swimming in a thick layer of cream. the New York Times declared the shoppers’ strike officially dead, at least as far as Fifth Avenue was concerned. “Shoulder to shoulder, almost cheek to cheek, the band of Christmas shoppers surrounded the two sales girls at the counter and demanded attention,” one story began. It went on to describe a couple who had driven a delivery truck to 34th Street and parked near Macy’s. While the wife went inside to shop, the husband guarded the truck. They were on their third or fourth stop of the day, and had already acquired a Christmas tree and trimmings, doll carriage, sled, pogo stick, and rocking horse. But these people were pikers compared to shoppers on Fifth Avenue, where the most expensive item on offer was a Russian sable coat made of 131 perfectly matched skins, going for a mere $60,000 ($714,285.70 in today’s dollars).
“I want some inexpensive gifts for a few friends,” said a prominent lawyer’s wife to a Fifth Avenue jeweler. In half an hour, she selected a diamond-studded cigarette holder for $250, a Dorine box for $60, a flat platinum watch for $1,200, and a pair of jade earrings for $175.
—The New York Times, December 25, 1921
In her thirty-minute spree at the jeweler’s, the lawyer’s wife spent the equivalent of $20,059.55 in today’s dollars—$2,976.20 for the cigarette holder, $714.30 for the trinket box, $14,285.70 for the platinum watch, and a trifling $2,083.35 for the earrings.
