Christmas 100 Years Ago - Part 2

Some more December issues from magazines 100 years ago, starting with Country Life in America from 1912.  One thing that struck me was that the ads were often just as beautiful as the other illustrations in the magazine.  These ads for Baker's Cocoa, for instance:

This particular magazine is chock full of really pretty illustrations and some very interesting stories as well.  One of these stories is "The Golden Wassail" by Ida M.H. Starr.  It is a gothic tale and the photographs include some transparent, ghostly figures in old-fashioned costumes, which I found a little surprising for 1912.  The full text of the story is available here.

One of the great illustrations is a color drawing by William L. Jacobs called "Under the Mistletoe."

Probably my favorite set of illustrations actually comes from the December 1913 issue, though - a set of color paintings that accompany an article about an elaborate nativity play presented by a New England community.

One of the notable articles from the Life magazine of 1912 is called "A Safe and Sane Christmas" and proposes several reforms in the way Christmas is celebrated, including: eliminating the practice of employing "imitation Santa Clauses . . . by charitable organizations, or in dry goods stores for promotional purposes" and also discontinuing the practice of gift-giving to anyone except children, which will "do away entirely with a whole mass of worry and anxiety and hypocrisy."  

The picture I really love from this issue is called "Twas the Night Before Christmas" by Angus MacDonnall and shows an elderly couple sitting in front of the fire, holding hands, and seeing in a vague outline the memory of their children hanging their stockings on the mantle.  

Of all the Christmas issues I've seen from this time, I think my favorites have come from The Delineator, which I'll cover in a future post.