Wrapped Up in Christmas: Vintage Illustrations and the Women Behind the Magic

My great-aunt kept her old copies of The Australian Women’s Weekly, and those magazines were my doorway into another world.

Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I could see that the Christmas illustrations belonged to an earlier time. The women, the clothes and the beautifully arranged rooms pictured lives I could not quite relate to. But the elegance and apparent ease completely captivated me.

So did the chubby, pink-cheeked Santas, the impossibly sweet little reindeer and the promise of magic spilling into every corner. They were old pictures even then. The enchantment, however, was entirely new to me.

There is still no Christmas aesthetic I prefer. I want Christmas to feel as though someone has sprinkled joy dust in every room: an explosion of colour and chaos, with children and magic at its heart.

Those illustrations understood how to invite me into that world. Looking at them now, I am interested not only in why they feel nostalgic, but in what they might have meant when the ink was fresh.

This is the face of Santa that I remember most fondly.

Image via The Graphics Fairy

Old pictures, new enchantment

My childhood encounter with those magazines was already a kind of looking back. I was discovering a Christmas world preserved by my great-aunt, not browsing the latest seasonal issue.

That distinction matters. What felt old to me had once been new to someone else.

A Christmas card bought in 1955 was not a vintage card. It was this year’s card. A fashionable illustration could offer something fresh, while an old-fashioned scene could invite its first audience to look backwards.

We need to separate the age of the paper from the age of the world it depicts. A horse-drawn coach on a mid-century card might suggest an earlier Christmas. A sharply stylised tree or fashionable domestic interior might speak much more directly to the present.

Today, either can look wonderfully nostalgic. Time has added another layer to the picture.

The decades from the 1930s to the 1970s were not one continuous visual style, either. A dated magazine issue or reliable collection record helps us place an image more accurately than a general impression of “retro”. Christmas imagery can be surprisingly good at disguising its age.

Image via The Graphics Fairy

The little reindeer did not know they were kitsch

We now reach for the word kitsch when we see a particularly sweet reindeer, a rosy Santa or a festive scene that has thrown restraint out of the sleigh.

But we cannot assume that was how its first audience understood it. One illustration might be deliberately comic; another might offer straightforward charm or sentiment. The intention belongs to the particular picture, not to a label we apply decades later.

What I remember is not an ironic appreciation. I was completely drawn in.

Santa’s pink cheeks made him feel warm and approachable. The little creatures seemed to belong to a world in which wonderful things could happen. Their appeal was not that they were sophisticated. It was that they made the magic feel possible.

They still do.

A little exhibition in your hands

I like to imagine the pleasure of encountering these seasonal pictures when they were new: a festive magazine cover on the newsstand, a card chosen for someone particular, a sheet of patterned paper unfolded across the table.

Radio, cinema, magazines and, increasingly, television belonged to different people’s lives in different ways across those decades. I would not claim that a new Christmas illustration excited everyone. But I can readily imagine the anticipation of seeing familiar festive subjects given a beautiful new treatment.

Printed pictures offered their own tangible pleasures. You could hold them, study them and return to them. In my case, you could discover them years later because someone had thought them worth keeping.

Some of the artists behind Christmas cards had extraordinary careers. The Henry Ford museum documents cards by artists associated with Disney, including Mary Blair and Eyvind Earle. Its examples include a 1945 card using Blair’s artwork from The Three Caballeros, and Earle’s 1955 Mailbox in the Snow.

Earle was designing Christmas cards before his Disney career and continued afterwards. The museum records more than 800 designs across his lifetime.

A greeting card was small, but the imagination behind it did not have to be. The Christmas cards from my childhood in the 1970s and 1980s are especially dear to me. I love pop culture references. They are a maker of the passage of time and the ever changing influences on our collective imaginations. 

Image via Click Americana

The paper was part of the present

Wrapping paper has a wonderfully brief starring role. Before we discover what is inside, it supplies colour, anticipation and a little suspense.

Hallmark’s history tells a charming story from Christmas 1917. When the Hall brothers ran out of solid-coloured gift dressing, they sold decorated French envelope linings instead. These proved popular enough for the brothers to begin printing their own gift wrap.

That is a chapter in commercial gift-wrap history, not the beginning of all decorated wrapping. What interests me is the human detail: a practical solution became something people enjoyed choosing.

There is pleasure in paper before there is anything to wrap. A repeating pattern invites the eye to wander. A tiny Santa appears again around the fold. A tree becomes a little graphic shape, then a whole forest across the sheet.

Perhaps you remember smoothing a piece worth saving. Perhaps your family never saved any at all. Even without a personal memory, the design can make you want to pause before tearing.

The woman making it all look effortless

The women in those old illustrations and images fascinated me. Their elegance and apparent ease were part of the invitation.

Looking now, I can enjoy that beauty and notice what sits outside the frame. The finished bow is there. The shopping list may not be. The lovely table is there. The decisions, errands and clearing up might be somewhere beyond the border.

These pictures are not records of every woman’s experience. An illustration may present an ideal, sell a product or tell a joke. But it can still prompt us to think about the person making Christmas happen.

I do not want to scold the pictures for being beautiful. Domestic creativity deserves admiration. Choosing colours, making a welcoming room and turning a parcel into something special are real skills.

I would simply like the woman holding the ribbon to receive a beautifully wrapped surprise of her own. Ideally before anyone asks her where the scissors are.

A snowy Christmas in the Australian summer

For an Australian viewer, there is another delightful layer: the gap between the picture and the weather outside.

A snowy cottage can sit on the mantel while the afternoon is hot enough to discourage any thought of lighting a fire. A card’s fur-trimmed figure can look perfectly festive even when we would prefer something considerably lighter.

The image need not be a portrait of our December to be enjoyable. Sometimes its appeal is precisely that it opens a little door into an imagined world.

My great-aunt’s magazines gave me access to that world. I did not need to recognise the life inside it to be enchanted by its Christmas.

Joy dust, not a perfect display

For me, Christmas is about children and magic. These illustrations made room for both so generously that I still find myself returning to their visual world.

Some contemporary festive styling feels generic and yet showy to me: plenty to look at, but not always much to wonder about. That is my preference, not a rule for anybody else’s home. I am simply more interested in enchantment than a flawless display.

Give me colour, a little chaos and something unexpectedly delightful in the corner. A sweet reindeer. A cheerful Santa. A decoration that makes no sense with its neighbours but absolutely belongs.

I am not longing to live in the era pictured in those magazines, nor imagining that its Christmases were easier. I am drawn to the imaginative world the illustrations created, and to the feeling that something wonderful might be about to happen.

A little magic with your name on it

That is also the thought behind To: Me, Love: Me: making room for you to be surprised, not only to organise the surprises.

If you are the person who makes Christmas happen, you can love the preparations and still want a moment when you do not already know what is inside the parcel.

The childhood thrill of wondering what might be waiting under the tree does not have to belong only to children. A little of the care you put into everyone else’s Christmas deserves to come back to you.

I still want joy dust in every room. I would just like some of it to land on the person sprinkling it.

Explore The Christmas Shop for pieces to bring a little of that pleasure into your own December.

References and further reading

The Henry Ford: Illustrating the Holidays: A Disney Connection
Hallmark: Early Innovation: 1910s–30s