Christmas 100 Years Ago

Another lobby display for the Main library that I got to help put together.  I was asked to find some historical holiday items from our periodicals collection - I decided to focus on Christmas 100 years ago and looked for items in magazines from 1912 (and a few from 1911 and 1913).  Of course, not everything could fit into the display case, so I'm also including some extra items here.

Before narrowing down the dates, I did find some very pretty covers for Ladies Home Journal, one from 1897 and another from 1902. 

Also in the December 1902 issue of Ladies Home Journal were some interesting ideas for decorating in a feature called "The Christmas Room: Showing Six Novel Ways of Decorating It." 

They suggest a "Jacob's Ladder" as an inexpensive alternative to a Christmas tree made from a step ladder covered in cheese cloth with evergreens, candles, cranberries and popcorn decorations and presents arranged on the steps.

Another of the "novel" ideas is a Christmas ship starting with a wooden frame, draped with muslin and hung with cotton for the sails, surrounded with cotton batting for icicles and sprinkled with "diamond dust."  The presents are placed inside the ship.

Fashion ideas for the holidays were also popular in the 1902 issue of Ladies Home Journal and included "Christmas Party Dresses for Girls" and some caps, collars, and scarves for "The Grandmother at Christmas Time."

Moving forward a few years, the 1911 and 1912 issues of Ladies Home Journal include Christmas poems, stories, songs (with sheet music), and articles as well as ideas for holiday decorating, cooking, dressing and gift-giving (with patterns for gifts to make).  Just a couple of the gift-giving and/or gift-making ideas include some cut-out cards to attach to Christmas presents and a pattern with cut-out decorations for a toy shop, made from a shoebox, where a little girl's dolls can go shopping.

The "Christmas Editorial" from 1912 offers a plea to make Christmas less about materialism and more about children:

"To put your hand in your pocket and extract a coin or a banknote, that is one thing.  Some folks buy grand pianos and diamond tiaras that way.  But to put your soul and heart into a gift that makes it an expression of your thought and your love, that is Christmas giving: that is of Christ and like Christ.  That is as near as we can come to God when He made to this world His Christmas present: His only begotten Son.  If, instead of stabbing Christmas to the heart with our frantic eleventh-hour rush for presents bought from a sense of duty, we would make it a children's day, what a warmer, happier Christmas it would be for us all."

Each year seems to feature a color spread of ideas for the Christmas table, like this one from the 1911 issue featuring "Christmas Baskets from the Farm" and "The Christmas Table and its Dainties." I especially liked the wishbone cake (see close-up) with chocolate frosting and actual wishbones stuck to the sides. 

Here are some more Christmas table pages with pretty color pictures of christmas cakes and other home-made dishes:

Finally, in the 1913 issue of Ladies Home Journal, I found a very nice two-page color spread of  Charles Dickens' The Christmas Carol retold in pictures by Arthur I. Keller.  Keller actually illustrated a volume of The Christmas Carol, which came out in 1914, as well as many other books, and contributed to most of the popular magazines at the time.  He even illustrated a Sherlock Holmes story in its first printing in an American magazine. 

 More to come in a future post about Christmas issues of other magazines from 1912!

The American Boy Magazine

Nashville Public Library has 2 volumes: November 1922-October 1923 and 1930.

The American Boy magazine was published from 1899-1941.  Its creator, editor, and publisher was Griffith Ogden Ellis who had been Senior V.P. of the Bank of Detroit and was the former president of the Detroit Street Railway Commission.  Ellis came up with the idea for the magazine when his newphew Willie Sprague was quarantined and only allowed by his mother to read Youth's Companion, which he considered to "namby pamby."  So Ellis introduced the mroe adventurous American Boy, which printed exciting features and fiction, and continued the magazine with schoolboy Willie in mind even as Willie grew to be an adult.

Willie Sprague was killed in the war at age 27.  At that point, Ellis created an imaginary character to serve as inspiration for the magazine--Skeeter Bennet, a 15 1/2-year-old high school sophomore. 

Time article about American Boy

 

The American Boy was the largest magazine for youth at the time.  In 1929, Ellise bought and merged his magazine with its biggest rival Youth's Companion.  This almost doubled The American Boy's circulation, which was already over 300,000. 

Time article about American Boy

 

In 1939, Ellis sold The American Boy to his business manager, Elmer Presley Grierson, whom he had been grooming to take over the magazine for many years.  Grierson had a new boy to inspire the magazine once he took over--his 15-year-old son John.

 



Time August 12, 1929 "The Press: Boys," p. 36.



Time March 27, 1939 "The Press: Willie to Skeeter to John," p. 38.



What's Special About The American Boy?

Exciting fictional stories about pirates, soliders, sports, animals, and adventures of all kinds.

Advertisements for toys and games, sporting and camping gear.

 A "Friendly Talks with the Editor" section on the front page of every issue in which the editor offered advice on topics like loyalty, sportsmanship, and work ethic.  From the November 1922 issue on Thanksgiving: "We believe the best way of giving thanks is by doing thanks.  The old Pilgrim Fathers who instituted Thanksgiving Day put their thanks into words and into a feast, but they also did their thanks as well.  They lived their thanks.  It is easy to say you are much obliged for a favor; but to show you are much obliged is a far different thing.  If you have received favors during the past year; if your life has been pleasant; if you have known prosperity and good health, the best thanks you can offer is to live your thanks next year."



Feature about Dr. James Naismith, who invented basketball.

High-interest educational articles like:

• "Where Money Comes From" about the printing and minting of money at the Treasury.
•  "What Makes Good Pictures Good" about moviemaking.
•  "Friends or Enemies?" about identifying snakes.

Profiles about successful men called "Boys Who Used their Brains."



Craft and building projects, articles

about technology

and how things work, puzzles, a regular feature on stamp collecting, articles about how to make money, profiles of real boys and their accomplishments or hobbies (horseshoe champion, mountain climbing, business ventures), and jokes.

The bound volumes in our collection don't include the magazine covers, but you can get an idea what the covers looked like here.

More information to come about the very popular Youth's Companion mentioned above in a future post!

 

The Art of Thrift: Then and Now

This is a display that I got to help with for the lobby of the downtown library (Nashville Public Library).

It started with some 1930s vintage quilt squares made from old feed sacks on one side and newspaper articles from the time period sewn on the other side (on loan from the FiftyForward center).

We took inspiration from these quilt squares and settled on a theme of thrift (i.e. re-using, up-cycling, re-purposing).  From there, I used the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature and identified articles from old magazines that described people's ingenuity in using ordinary or waste items to create something useful or beautiful.  Then, we displayed books from our circulating Non-Fiction collection about the current trend of up-cycling or re-purposing. 

Some of the articles I found:

• "Here's a New Use for Old Papers: Making a House Out of Newspapers."  American Magazine from June, 1929.
• "Make it With Feed Bags."  Women's Home Companion from September, 1950.

• "Modeling With Nuts and Bolts."  Popular Mechanics from January, 1946.
• "Conservation Begins in the Sewing Basket."  House Beautiful from September, 1942.

• "Salvage Fashion Fair Shows How to Make Wearable Clothes from Scraps." Life from June 29, 1942.
• "Something From Nothing: Using Upholstery From Wrecked Cars."  Saturday Evening Post from February 28, 1942.

• "Made-Over Junk."  Life from November 2, 1942.
• "Blanket Fashions."  Life from February 17, 1947.
• "Friendship Skirts."  Life from September 11, 1944.