Talking point
Good Housekeeping’s December issue has been helping to make the festive season magical for 100 years. Deputy editor Emma Justice shares how we’ve brought Christmas to life in our pages through the decades
Twinkling lights and jingling bells, Last Christmas playing on repeat, mistletoe, mulled wine and a classic festive feast – in turbulent times, there’s something deeply reassuring about the traditions we come back to year after year.
Nostalgia and the festive season go hand in hand as we reconnect with friends and family, remember when Santa wasn’t on TikTok and try not to cry at the John Lewis advert!
Looking back over a century of festive issues, a couple of things are certain: roast turkey is non-negotiable and we’ve been publishing a recipe for it, as well as plum pudding and fruit cake, every year since we started.
One part of the day will feel different this year – the Christmas Day message, which will be delivered by King Charles III for the first time. This royal tradition dates back to 1932, when George V, The King’s great-grandfather, first broadcast a Christmas message (written by Rudyard Kipling) over the wireless. This is just one example of the way traditions endure, yet evolve with the times.
So, with some help from the Good Housekeeping archive, here is the story of our Christmases past, present and future…
1920s
• Christmas stories, poems and essays written by HG Wells, W Somerset Maugham and Walter de la Mare brought festive cheer, religious enlightenment and early 20th-century morality to our pages.
• We offered a ‘Christmas Shopping Service’ to anyone ‘out of reach of London’s shops or living in the Colonies’. We even shipped them at no extra cost!
• Our first ever Christmas gift guide included a lace-edged linen handkerchief for 1s 3d (roughly 6p today) and wool-lined gauntlets with pompom tassels for 25s (£1.25 today). Adverts for Hoovers (the company registered in the UK in 1919) promised husbands they’d make a memorable gift for their wives that would ‘add to the joy of her New Year’. By 1929, the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was what everyone wanted to find under the tree.
• One writer’s advice on how to enjoy Christmas was remarkably prescient: ‘Do not attempt to enter any shops in December; they will not make you happy.’
1930s
• Sheet music was printed in our Christmas issues, as people gathered to sing carols at home. We also published a cartoon from one of Walt Disney’s Silly Symphony animations.
• W
