Ahh! The memories...

I thought this was probably the best of Susan Waggoner's festive season books. It's a Wonderful Christmas: The Best of the Holidays 1940-1965 looked back to the 1940s to 1960s and Under the Tree: The Toys and Treats that Made Christmas Special, 1930-1970 focused on toys from 1930 to 1970. All three books follow the same format with the words backed up plenty of Christmas photos, illustrations and graphics.

I was rather disappointed with the feel of the two previous books because I thought they looked rather scrappy and didn't display the pictures and page graphics to the best advantage but I'm happy to say that this latest edition really captures the feel of the season from page one. It starts with the 1920s and runs up to the 1960s with a mixture of reminiscences from personalities and unknown folk, details of everyday life at Christmas time over the decades, quotes from books and period magazines but I think it's the illustrations that come across best. These are taken from period ads (lots of them) catalogs, Christmas cards, photos and more (perhaps the catalog pages could have been bigger to see the prices, though). Fortunately the design of the pages pulls all this material together to make the book a pleasure to browse through.

Well worth getting if you want to relive those nostalgic Yuletide memories or maybe, if you are young enough, you just want to find out why your parents are always raving about Christmas in those simpler times. Also worth checking out is Christmas Wishes: A Catalog of Vintage Holiday Treats and Treasures which has an amazing collection of commercial Christmas graphic items from the fifties and sixties.

Christmas Memories: Gifts, Activities, Fads, and Fancies, 1920s-1960s is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

Title spread.

Page two of the Contents which would have looked better as a Contents spread. Great picture of Kris Kringle though.

Tree decorations from the Sixties.

The wonderful Fifties.

The wonderful Fifties.

Typical spread.

A spread from the Thirties Christmas.

Simpler times back in the Thirties.

Chapter opener from the Forties.

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