Christmas Advertising: LIFE Magazine, Nov. 30, 1959 (Xmas#5)

Just look at that radiant smile!  And it’s all because of (find out below) …

 

Originally published on OpenSalon.com on November 30, 2013

NOTE: I occasionally post off-topic entries, especially during the Christmas season.  I’ll be taking a breather from the My Life — In Concert! series for December to make way for three or four Christmas-themed entries to come in the the next few weeks.

A couple of yuletides ago, I published an entry highlighting Christmas-related ads spanning 1949-2011 that were culled from my magazine collection, focusing on gift-giving suggestions from throughout the years as well as with ads relating to seasonal social activities and entertaining.

While I love old magazines in general, I am particularly fond of and seek out issues of LIFE (something I chronicled in this piece on the first issue of LIFE on the 1950s).  In this entry, I am zeroing in on one particular issue, with a newsstand date from exactly 54 years ago today: November 30, 1959.

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Picture This: VA Poster Collection Highlights

Howdy to those of you on both Open Salon and WordPress … I’ve had another OS/WP absence owing to a few reasons: life stuff, some needed household re-arranging, and a spell of writer’s block.  I was also having too much damn hot fun in the summertime as of late, seeing a slew of great gigs over the past two months.

Well … that fun seems to have unblocked things.

KA-CHING-A-LING: Christmas Advertising Highlights 1949-2011

Season’s Greetings from Schlitz.  And Joan from Mad Men (Life, December 1960) .

Originally published on OpenSalon.com on December 19, 2011

Christmas is the season of peace, good cheer, and jollity … and maxing out your credit card; stressing over what to buy everyone in between bouts of insomnia as you try to recall if you bought Uncle Walt a similar pair of McGregor socks last year; rock’em sock’em parents giving each other a sharp right hook as they fight over the last (insert latest toy fad here) on the shelves while dodging pepper spray; abused, overworked sales staff squaring off against exhausted, overheated shoppers to discern who’s more fed up; mall patrons launching law suits following multi-car fender benders after a downpour of freezing rain has turned the parking lot into a fiesta of black ice …