A Collier’s Christmas

I don’t know why I kept it in the first place, or even how it fell into my hands, but one of the things that I haul out every Christmas season, along with the tree lights and decorations, wreaths for the door, and an old nativity set, is the December 23, 1950, edition of Collier’s magazine.
The covers barely cling to frayed pages and, just like me (I was six years old in 1950), it’s beginning to show its age. But I’ve kept it as a reminder of the simpler Christmases we celebrated when I was a boy, and of things that still are the essence of the season for me.
It was published in a time when Christmas goods didn’t appear on store shelves until after Thanksgiving, the five and dime on Main Street was still the place to shop, Bing Crosby crooned on the radio, and Hollywood had yet to decide that Christmas was the day to lure everyone into theaters to watch things get blown up. Even then some of the magazine’s readers worried about changing things just for the sake of change. A letter to the editor, for example, complained about the “new look in telephone booths.”
The front cover is a traditional scene: Carolers singing in front of a big, decorated tree on a snowy, small-town square. People are bustling by, carrying packages and, just in the upper right-hand corner, a bright star that could be the star of Bethlehem.
In a far cry from this year, one of the first pages is an insurance company ad headlined, “Don’t give a cold a chance.” It urges people to guard against “the chief health hazard of winter.” Right next to it another full-page ad recommended Kleenex, “your best buy in tissues,” if you should catch a cold.
Inside the 15-cent magazine are stories that I’ve read and re-read for many Christmases, most of them about people of short means and long hope and how the miracle of Christmas worked in their lives — a tree decorated in the forest for a family that couldn’t afford one, a grouch who is given the Christmas spirit by a little girl, a little boy trying to stay awake long enough to see Santa. I liked the stories as a boy and still like them today. They are simple stories, simply told: Just as is the important story of Christmas itself.
But, if the old magazine gives an idealized vision of a childlike Christmas in its stories (yes, Virginia, “Yes, Virginia” is there), most of its advertisements are certainly for grown-ups.
The back cover has one of those famous ads featuring a rotund, cherubic Santa downing a Coca Cola. But in the page just before it Miller High Life suggested beer was a better Christmas drink. In fact, two-thirds of the advertising is for cigarettes or booze.
A carton of Fatimas, “best of all long cigarettes,” would surely make the holiday brighter. Santa holds a cigarette well away from his flowing beard as he tells us that Pall Malls are mild and “Guard Against Throat-Scratch.” Another ad suggests you try a Kaywoodie Pipe and “feel at home anywhere.” In an ad designed to appeal to all ages, a toddler proclaims, “My Dad would never smoke anything but Marlboro,” which had no filter then.
A liquor ad asks: “Wouldn’t you rather give (and get) Four Roses?” Calvert Reserve’s ad promises “your own good taste will tell you, it’s smart to give and serve.” Seagram’s Seven “says Merry Christmas in a special way.” Fleischmann’s Preferred was the blended whiskey offering “quality at a winning price.” Corby’s advertised its “Christmas Remembrance Bottle” as the perfect gift for postman, delivery man, service station attendant, and as a great bottle to swap with the milkman. Kentucky Tavern offered a gift package at no extra charge. Harwood’s Canadian proclaimed itself “one gift no one will exchange.”
Having never savored Harwood’s Canadian or smoked a Kaywoodie, I don’t know whether their slogans are true, but I do know that the simple Christmas messages, even in the ads, reverberate with me still.
The old magazine helps bring back the idea of Christmas as viewed through the innocent eyes of a six-year-old, and I like that. One of the enduring pleasures of Christmas is that it is a season when old men can catch the Christmas spirit, can remember and recapture a wee part of those bygone days.
William Saroyan wrote that, when he said “Merry Christmas,” he wanted it “to mean what it means. Not just words under a picture or card, dropped in the mailbox on the corner, or handing you something wrapped up in red paper which I have bought. I want it to say what it says — the way a child says it.”
That goes for me, too, as I wish a Merry Christmas to all.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, Cajuns and Other Characters, is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.