A Christmas Yuleblog

Several years ago, I started a feature on this blog that showcased selections from my vintage Christmas ad collection. In years past, my collection of ads had come from antique malls and flea markets.  Vendors would take old magazines of LIFE, TIME, Look, Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Newsweek, Ladies Home Journal, and dozens of older vintage magazines and rip the ads out one by one to sell individually. The profit margins were substantial and a huge market began. Many people still sell ads on eBay, the antique stores and flea markets still peddle them. Then someone noticed the effect it had on the used magazine market - old magazines that normally sold for $5 or less were now $20 or more. Thanks to the continued shredding of older magazines, finding complete magazines are getting more scarce in the marketplace. I began to look at the ads I had collected and noticed the uneven cuts out of the magazine with a box cutter. The quality of many of the ads were good but could ...

In addition to collecting Christmas music, I have collected nearly 1000 vintage Christmas ads over the years. Many of these include celebrities, radio, television, cigarettes, liquor, modern appliances, and the like. I will attempt every Friday from here until I run out, I will feature an ad from my collection. I invite you to add a fun comment, witticism, clever remark, or observation in the comments section provided. Any comments deemed worthy of repeating will be included into this entry where all the world will see it. In the last installment of this feature (see link above), I selected an ad from the 1920s because of its simple but elegant illustration and its dependence on its text to get its message across. Earlier this year, I came across a 1942 LIFE magazine and found several different wartime ads, Christmas ads, and Christmas wartime ads. But the one ad that struck me as the cleverest and funniest of the lot was this one from a once-popular whiskey brand. Between ...

In addition to collecting Christmas music, I have collected nearly 1000 vintage Christmas ads over the years. Many of these include celebrities, radio, television, cigarettes, liquor, modern appliances, and the like. I will attempt every Friday from here until I run out, I will feature an ad from my collection. I invite you to add a fun comment, witticism, clever remark, or observation in the comments section provided. Any comments deemed worthy of repeating will be included into this entry where all the world will see it. Several months ago, as I was attempting to complete the reorganization and cataloguing of all of my vintage Christmas ads, I visited Antiques on Broadway near downtown Fort Wayne. This shop usually has a gem or two to be unearthed. In the basement of the store sits a booth that contains three folding tables of vintage ads, all carefully organized and wrapped in plastic for your protection. Many was the time I browsed the table that contained "Christm...

In addition to collecting Christmas music, I have collected nearly 1000 vintage Christmas ads over the years. Many of these include celebrities, radio, television, cigarettes, liquor, modern appliances, and the like. I will attempt every Friday from here until I run out, I will feature an ad from my collection. I invite you to add a fun comment, witticism, clever remark, or observation in the comments section provided. Any comments deemed worthy of repeating will be included into this entry where all the world will see it. I had many projects over the past summer. One was getting the remainder of my vintage LIFE, Look, Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, McCall's, and Ladies Home Journal magazines organized and cataloged. I reviewed each issue for Christmas ads I either had, forgot to add, or to find new ones I might have overlooked. I've also added to my collection of vintage magazines. When I opened a LIFE magazine dated December 12, 1938 I won at eBay, I was pl...

In addition to collecting Christmas music, I have collected nearly 1000 vintage Christmas ads over the years. Many of these include celebrities, radio, television, cigarettes, liquor, modern appliances, and the like. Occasionally on Friday from here until I run out, I will feature an ad from my collection. I invite you to add a fun comment, witticism, clever remark, or observation in the comments section provided. Any comments deemed worthy of repeating will be included into this entry where all the world will see it. It's been quite a while since I've posted something here. After my Chicago trip , I began to look at the calendar year ahead and plan out what needs to be done in the upcoming weeks and months. All that took a back seat to my back seat. It's been nearly 10 years since I became a stay-at-home dad. Whenever I was done tending to my kids or in between laundry cycles or whenever I got a free day home from my theater volunteer work, I would sit at the c...

In addition to collecting Christmas music, I have collected nearly 1000 vintage Christmas ads over the years. Many of these include celebrities, radio, television, cigarettes, liquor, modern appliances, and the like. Almost every Friday from here until I run out, I will feature an ad from my collection. I invite you to add a fun comment, witticism, clever remark, or observation in the comments section provided. Any comments deemed worthy of repeating will be included into this entry where all the world will see it. Last week, I posted an ad that showed a vintage transistor radio from 1955 that was the size of a church hymnal. After spending some time leafing through my ads this morning, I wondered how I would follow it up. I kept going back through my archives year by year to find something that just struck me as odd. And I think I found it with this ad from Westinghouse: (Click on image to enlarge) We get a kid mentioning Santa Claus, some other mentions of Christmas t...

In addition to collecting Christmas music, I have collected nearly 1000 vintage Christmas ads over the years. Many of these include celebrities, radio, television, cigarettes, liquor, modern appliances, and the like. Almost every Friday from here until I run out, I will feature an ad from my collection. I invite you to add a fun comment, witticism, clever remark, or observation in the comments section provided. Any comments deemed worthy of repeating will be included into this entry where all the world will see it. While ruffling through old boxes of cassettes and junk I've carried with me since the Great Toledo Fire , I came across my old Montgomery Ward "Walkman" - a cassette/radio job complete with a three slider equalizer that gave anything I listened to that extra ounce of volume. The fire effectively destroyed the machine but I can't bear to throw this artifact out. This was the machine I listened to as I travelled back and forth through my college yea...