Christmas Memories: Christmas Clipart & Memories From Vintage Newspapers

This book will evoke the happiest memories of your life. We all yearn for simpler times when life wasn't as complicated and Christmas was the very best time of the year.
We remember the good times with family and friends who may be long gone or separated by many miles. Christmas and its celebrations are connections to the anchors of our life and some of our deepest and closest relationships. We feel sentimental about events and people when Life wasn't fraught by problems and complications. For the religious, Christmas has an even deeper significance as the celebration of their deepest religious beliefs.
The traditions of Christmas and the celebrations of those traditions are links to our past and the events that create our identities and sense of self. It is the time of year when we can feel numinous, and that there are feelings, emotions and thoughts that make us feel full of awe and wonder. Put simply, it is the most wonderful time of the year.
Throughout our history, the times that we live in, are always reflected by the media and images that shape us. In the recently-passed 20th century, mass media consisted of newspapers, print, radio and television. The Internet never came to be until the 1990s when the 20th century was almost over. In most households, the newspaper was the ubiquitous source that was read from cover to cover by every member of the family. Adults read the news. The young men read the sports. The womenfolk read the household hints and fashion and kids read the funnies. 
When newspapers were typeset, various printing companies would provide them with very large books of clipart. Small newspapers could not afford to have a full time illustrator, so large a collection images were supplied by various printing companies. These collections were like a giant scrapbook, or those old-fashioned Valentine books where you had to actually cut out the images to use them. These clipart images represented all possible illustration needs for the newspaper, everything from advertising images of plumbers and milkmen, to farmers and bankers. Food was also a big component of these illustrations. But the largest collection of clipart was for Christmas, when newspapers could sell a lot more advertising with businesses wishing their customers a Merry Christmas.
These bits of illustration clipart were reflections of the times. Everything from the fonts, to the layouts to the representations of the icons of Christmas was interpreted through the lens of what was going on the world. You will see the peace images during the war years. The energy of the 1950's is reflected in the motifs and you can see the Flower-Power spirit in the fonts and illustrations from the 1970's. History put a mark on these illustrations. Instantly we identify with the feelings that these illustrations evoke.
Each of these illustrations were taken from clippings of a collection of defunct newspapers from 1936 to 1976. The images were scanned and cleaned up with software. However in many cases, you can still see the blotches, tears, folds, smeared ink and all of the attributes that come from the newspaper printing processes through the years. Some of the images were yellowed with countless fingers thumbing the pages. However each of them has its own cachet that reflects the life of times of when they appear in print during the Christmas season of the year. Along with the clipart, is a synopsis of the major events of that year. The epilogue of this book has the ultimate list of Christmas memories.
So sit back. Put on some Christmas carols. Light a fire in the fireplace. Get yourself a cup of hot chocolate or a glass of mulled apple cider, and take a ride down memory lane in a one horse open sleigh. Peruse this collection of images from the past, and let the good memories wash over you and make you feel good. Let them fill you with a spirit that Christmas was meant to be. Merry Christmas.