Good Housekeeping Magazine, December 1956
I've had this paperbound book since...forever. It's more than a comic book: it has comic-strip-style stories but also stories in traditional format, and twenty Christmas carols--with full piano music! (Were kids in the '50's of a slightly different mindset than now?) And the very first comic in the book is...The Christmas Story, taken almost word for word from the KJV. This is a no-fooling-around CHRISTMAS Treasury, even if it's published as a mainstream comic book.
The other stories include Santa and the Angel, The Night Before Christmas, Santa's Christmas Mouse, Hansy and the Spirit of Christmas, and versions of Andersen's The Little Fir-Tree and Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
The back cover is a holiday alphabet that ends this way:
T is for toys
all sizes and shapes
that Santa will give
to good children who wait.
M is for mouse
that hides in the hall
and peeks out to see
who is coming to call!
A is for Andy,
Alice and ann
going to sleep
as fast as they can.
S is for Santa
who brings Christmas joys
on each Christmas Eve
to good girls and boys!
I'm not sure how long I've had this copy of GH, but I'm a bit ticked off at myself: as I was lifting it out this morning, I accidentally finished ripping off the front cover which was kind of hanging by a thread already. Big oops. I'm not sure if I want to tape it...I might just put the whole thing into a big Ziploc to hold it together.
The cover says that this is "The most famous Christmas Issue of All." And it is a very good one; it even includes "The Year without a Santa Claus," by Phyllis McGinley and with illustrations by Jan Balet. Here's one of the illustrations, posted at a blog called Today's Inspiration.
Plus there are lots of ads, lists of good gifts for the Man, a story about "The Boom in Pet Birds," a craft article proving that "Felt Covered Bricks Make Bright Door Stoppers," and an article about "Why phoning home takes longer at Christmas."
It does? Well, not now...but in 1956 it really did!
(This Christmas just getting home might take longer. We have a friend currently stuck with the crowd in London--praying he can make it back by the weekend!)
2 comments:
What a delight to see that Good Housekeeping magazine! Of course, I wasn't born at the time (cough, cough...but my Mom WAS carrying me then :) What makes it a delight is how much I used to love the December issue of Good Housekeeping magazine. It was the best one of the year, and my mother (and eventually I did too) always got that issue and poured over its pages. I even recall she'd save the December ones, and put them by her bedside at Christmas.
Thanks for the reminder of how women haven't changed so much - whether it was chatting around the town well, at the quilting bee (OK, skipped a millennium there...), in the letters and magazines you spoke of, or through wonderful blogs like yours :-)
What a great little treasure!
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