by William B. Waits
This is a different sort of Christmas book for me, as it is a sociological textbook, albeit one that starts with an amusing piece by Corey Ford. Critics of the 20th and now 21st century Christmas blame its excesses on "commercialization"—Mr. Waits (and what an appropriate name for a man who is comparing the old Christmas with the new!) examines a different theory: that the change of the United States from a largely agrarian nation to an urban one brought about the change from the idea of home-crafted personal Christmas gifts as being appropriate to the purchase of manufactured goods (since the seasonal lull for farming families would not happen to those employed in an industrial society, and thus no time for making gifts).
The main draw of this intriguing book is the reproduction of advertisements from the 1880s through the 1930s showing the change from the original manufactured gifts (notions or "gimcracks") to the simple elegant card to more expensive gifts, including those which years before would not have been considered gifts, like appliances, automobiles, and everyday clothing. There's also an examination of how advertisements made people think certain gifts (and therefore themselves) as inadequate, and also how the face of the woman consumer changed across the decades from the Gibson girl to the fun-loving flapper to the elegant, detached matron of the 1930s, and how advertisements composed after the closing of the frontier emphasized manly gifts for boys as a way of strengthening their manhood without a need for them to experience the frontier for themselves.
I quite enjoyed this...your mileage may vary!
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