A Studies in Crap war on Christmas Special: ’30s kids crave toys, neglect Jesus, attempt minstrelsy
Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
St. Nicholas for Boys and Girls
Date: December, 1932
The Cover Promises: Exactly the kind of joyous, old-fashioned Christmas liberals elected Obama to destroy.
Representative Quote:
“Fat people may wonder why they become so very popular at Christmas time. Especially Aunts. If they are wise, they suspect something when on Christmas Eve … their nieces approach them sweetly and and say ‘Aunt Maggie, would you very specially mind if I borrowed one of your stockings — just for tonight?”
Here’s a surprise. This New Yorker-dense dispatch from a purer American past is guaranteed to upset those of you who believe that the Best Buy cashier piping “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” somehow undoes all that is sacred about buying The Hangover on Blu-Ray. In all 132 pages, I only came across one reference to that “reason for the season”: The Christ Child turns up in a review of Eric P. Kelly‘s The Christmas Nightingale and that’s it.
Still, Baby Jesus has one up on that glory-hog Santa, who doesn’t show up here at all. Instead, St. Nick offers adventure stories, a girl-detective serial, more book reviews than the Sunday Times, an extravagant eight-page, multi-thousand word feature celebrating 1932’s newest toys, and strategies kids might employ to get as many presents as possible. St. Nick, it turns out, was as dedicated to moving product as Nintendo Power was.
Please join Bill O’Reilly and I in boycotting the Depression. Did Christmases like Kenny and Dolly‘s ever really exist?
Christmas isn’t about presents! It’s about disrobing in front of mannequins!
