The Surprising History of Christmas Gifts

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel

History, Education, Society & Culture

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Christmas Eve, 1913. For months, newspapers have been trumpeting an urgent message: Do your Christmas shopping early. It would be easy to assume this was the work of greedy department stores and slick ad companies. But it wasn’t – at least not at first. It started as the rallying cry of a labor reformer who was striving to improve the lives of retail workers. Ever since, Americans have been wrestling over the values at the heart of holiday shopping. But even the most earnest efforts at reform have backfired, time and again. How did Christmas gifts become a thing in the first place? And what were some of the spirited attempts to make the holiday shopping season merry for all?

Special thanks to our guests: Jennifer Le Zotte, professor of history and material culture at the University of North Carolina - Wilmington; Ellen Litwicki, professor emerita at the State University of New York at Fredonia; and Paul Ringel, professor of history at High Point University and author of Commercializing Childhood.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The History Channel, Original Podcast
0:04.9	History this week. Christmas Eve 1913
0:13.2	I'm Sally Helm
0:22.1	The gifts are wrapped, the stockings are hung, at least they should be.
0:27.0	Because in this year 1913, anyone who is still standing in line at a crowded department store really has no excuse.
0:36.0	For months now, newspapers have been broadcasting a simple message.
0:41.2	Do your Christmas shopping early.
0:44.5	Way back on May 30th, a notice ran in a paper in Salina, Kansas.
0:51.0	It said, yesterday the government thermometer registered 104.
0:55.8	And then right after that, seemingly out of nowhere, do your Christmas shopping early.
1:03.5	As summer turned to autumn, turned to winter, the slogan started to show up everywhere,
1:09.0	on posters in Buffalo, New York.
1:11.6	Stuck to envelopes in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
1:14.8	By the first week of December, papers in Fremont, Nebraska, and Columbus, Georgia,
1:19.6	and Morrisville, Vermont were printing this message in bold face type.
1:23.6	Do your Christmas shopping early.
1:26.6	All this got us wondering, how did this early Christmas thing start?
1:32.4	We began our hunt for the answer in Midtown Manhattan.
1:38.6	Julia Press.
1:39.7	Hi, Sally.
1:40.5	I found you.
1:41.7	On a recent afternoon, I met up with producer Julia Press.
	...

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