Christmas in America

Christmas preparations somehow sent me down the rabbit hole of reviewing six decades worth of American magazines covers at Christmastime. It started as a random image search, getting me in the spirit, but then it got interesting. I started to see a pattern, and was reminded of something important about America that we’re trained to forget.

America was once a magazine culture.

Harper’s Magazine was one of the oldest and best-selling since its founding during the Civil War. The cover for Christmas 1898 is one of the oldest color covers. It’s an apocalyptic vision of the Star of Bethlehem — a light which illumines the way to the unveiling of Christmas, the Light of Christ.

Good Housekeeping was founded in 1885, and it was also one of the most read magazines in America. Sacred images like this Madonna and Child in the 15th century Luca della Robbio style were practically tradition for their Christmas cover in 1921.

Good Housekeeping was oriented towards women running bustling households full of children. This humble image of Mary worshipping the New Born King was their choice for the Christmas cover in 1924.

While The Saturday Evening Post had been around since 1821. By the 1920s it was booming as the number one magazine in America. The Christmas cover from 1926 portrays the Virgin Mary with the Three Kings’ Gifts, as well as the Shepherd Boy looking towards the light of Christmas.

That Della Robbio style of the Madonna & Child from 1921 was apparently very popular with cover editors, as it recurs frequently. We can see here the clear faces of Jesus and Mary piercing through a renaissance frame for the Christmas cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1927.

The 1928 Christmas cover of The Saturday Evening Post seems to reprise the 1926 cover, but now with Mary worshipping Christ the Newborn King. Thirty years into my search, I was starting to see a pattern.

The next year, in December 1929, America was three months into The Great Depression.

The editors at Good Housekeeping unite the Nativity with the Christmas Tree for its Christmas cover. I notice the candles on the tree look enchantingly like angels. The newborn king has his arms flung wide open with love for his happy mother. Nothing in the bank after “the Crash,” but Love Itself has come down from heaven so rejoice!

Strong “It’s a Wonderful Life” vibes.

Then there was “Life” magazine. This illustrated cover from Christmas 1933 shows two Catholic priests commenting on a Friar dressed as Saint Nick. Their caption, that his red nose is “legal again,” is a reference to Prohibition having just ended with the ratification of the 21st amendment: a reminder that Catholics (known to favor feasting and a merry drink) were also ascendent during this period of American public life.

And then came TIME magazine, founded in 1923 by Henry Luce. It revolutionized news by creating very short and sharp articles — the X of the day. Just nine months before Germany invaded Poland, and world war broke out over Europe, TIME magazine’s 1938 Christmas cover features the Nativity, by the famous Parisian artist Jean Charlot, with the caption from the Magi searching for the Messiah: “Where is He that is born King of the Jews?” (Mt 2:2)

Collier’s Weekly peaked in the 1940s with this 1943 cover which features a minimalist graphic for the Star of Bethlehem — but the key is the headline selling the issue: “Bishop Sheen Tells The Story of the Birth of Christ.” Soon to become ArchySheen had been a professor at Catholic University of America, and became nationally known as host of “The Catholic Hour” radio program with 4 million listeners a week.

Christmas covers at TIME magazine got increasingly medieval over the 40s and 50s.

Just months after WW2 ended — the 1945 cover visually recalls that Christianity created the peace of Europe (and so could do so again). The editors, exhausted by war, celebrate the Nativity as “Peace on earth among men of good will.”

Back to The Saturday Evening Post, where everyone, including the cover editors, would have assumed that, naturally, you’d be at Church for Christmas services…in 1953.

Many of the Christmas covers for the great magazines also feature images of Saint Nicholas, or Winter-scapes, or looking into Train displays through the grand Department Store windows of the 40s and 50s. However, sacred images of Christmas like this Fra Angelico Virgin and Child are ubiquitous too, and that’s the pattern that jumped out at me:

Christianity was the unwritten constitution of the country. It held us together.

TIME’s cover for December 24, 1955 says so:

By the 1960s, Christmas covers became more consistently profane. Santas, but no saints.

Magazines were overtaken by television, about the same time American culture was trading Christianity for something more “radical.” And then the magazine cover trail starts to grow cold.

You can check out the “Christmas” cover for The Saturday Evening Post in 1968. It’s a bit unsettling. If the common faith wasn’t gone, the fabric was certainly fraying.

Christianity was a publicly held faith in American life until it wasn’t. Radical secularism has nearly killed us. If we want a true American renaissance, we must at least do what they did.

We must believe in God.

We must publicly celebrate Christmas again — not just as individuals, but as a society, in public, in Congress, at the White House, on X.

“Merry Christmas” reconnects our country to an unwritten constitution that precedes us — like the Star of Bethlehem — and also illumines the way to the very cause of greatness.

RETVRN