Give a Real Conversation Piece for Christmas
Frost covers the windows. There’s a roaring fire in the fireplace. A small child walks down the stairs to see that Santa visited during the night leaving a stocking full of goodies and presents under the Christmas tree. If it is not obvious enough, I chose a periodical printed around Christmas, more specifically The Saturday Evening Post printed December 15, 1962, for my second library research assignment. In order to be fully prepared to analyze the publication, I made sure to have the Christmas Pandora station playing as well as a cup of peppermint hot cocoa sitting next to my computer.
One of the first things that I noticed while reading through the Post, was that almost every gift advertisement was labeled as a gift for Christmas, not a gift for the season or the holidays, which is something I particularly liked because I believe in giving each holiday their due. Instead of throwing Hanukah, Christmas and Kwanzaa into one nebulous “Happy Holidays” they should be given their proper “Happy Hanukah” etc. However I digress. Back to the Post…something else that stood out to me was the number of advertisements for tobacco companies and producers of alcoholic beverages. The tobacco advertisement that stood out the most was an ad for Lucky Strike cigarettes. It was a full page, color add that featured a Christmas themed carton of cigarettes and on the side of the carton it said Merry Christmas. I viewed it as a reflection of a time where people were not concerned with “political correctness.” Another advertisement that stood out was an advertisement for General Telephone and Electronics in which there is a picture of a snowman holding three different rotary telephones and the hook line for the ad was “Give a real conversation piece for Christmas.” I got a slight chuckle from the pun. The last advertisement that stood out to me was a page titled “207 holiday gift ideas from Holiday.” At first I did not know what Holiday was, but after a few minutes of research, I discovered that it was a travel magazine that was first published by AAA in 1928 and it ran until 1977. The gift ideas ranged from Mont Blanc fountain pens to Chanel No. 5 perfume to many different alcoholic beverages and vacation areas and accommodations.
The first article in the Post was article titled “The Real Scandal of Divorce: Unjust and archaic laws, varying from state to state, force couples to commit fraud and perjury.” Living in a society where on average fifty-percent of marriages end in divorce, I was interested to see what the opinion on divorce was back in 1962. Due to the lack of uniformity in the court systems of the States, couples were travelling to states that were considered “divorce havens” because their laws regarding divorce were more lax than those of the state in which the couple was married. For example, say you and your spouse just were not getting along well and the marriage was rocky due to incompatibility. Well, at the time incompatibility was considered a specific ground for divorce only in Alaska, New Mexico, Oklahoma and the Virgin Islands. So if you were married in Texas, you would have to cross into either Oklahoma or New Mexico in order to get a divorce, in which case the divorce would be respected by the rest of the United States because of the “full faith and credit” clause in the U.S. Constitution.
Did you know that two young Austrians where inspired to write the classic Christmas hymn “Silent Night” because of some rather serious misfortune that that had gone through? Well, I did not until I read about it in this issue of the Post. It was due to this article that I learned that it was due to an organ malfunction and an organ repairman that “Silent Night” became the classic hymn that it is today. Long story short, it was December 23, 1818 in the village of Oberndorf by Salzburg where Franz Gruber was the organist at the church of St. Nicholas. Well, on that fateful day, he sat down to play the organ, but no sound was produced. Enter Joseph Mohr, who was the temporary priest at church, who takes Gruber to the epicenter of the problem. A mouse had gnawed a hole into the leather bellow that supplies the wind for the organ. Franz was distraught because “Christmas Eve Mass without was unthinkable.” Well Father Mohr had written a little poem , “Silent night, holy night; All is calm, all is bright./Holy Infant so tender and mild, Sleep in heavenly peace.” The next night at Mass, the song was sung and then forgotten by the next day. When the organ repairman came in the spring, he asked what the parish had without music for Christmas Eve mass. By that time Father Mohr had stored away the poem, but he got it out for the gentleman who asked if he could keep it. One the man left the parish, and began to share to song. “It spread from Austria to Germany as folk music. Only in later years were Mohr and Gruber acknowledged as the creators, though not a penny did they ever earn. It crossed borders; it went to sea with German emigrants.” That is interesting story of how the Christmas hymn “Silent Night” came to be. I have sung “Silent Night” every year at the Christmas Eve service in Foyil, Oklahoma, but it was not until today that I learned how it came to be.
Without a doubt The Saturday Evening Post succeeded in acknowledging Christmas. It was evident on almost every other page with either an advertisement for Christmas gifts, or an article about something pertaining to Christmas. Personally I enjoyed reading the Post, especially an issue that was printed ten days before Christmas, as it gave me an excuse to listen to Christmas music and drink hot cocoa.
