By the time I started work this morning, I already had dozens of emails waiting to leap at me with breathless exclamation marks.
“Season of savings!” “New deals just dropped!” “Score early deals now!”
Strolling through these daily missives is like walking down the midway of a carnival. I am warned not to pass up great offers. Money? Don’t worry, I’m told, I can pay later.
Which is what many people do, by the way. At the start of the annual holiday shopping season, it’s worth noting that a survey from Consolidated Credit found 36% of respondents admitting they still are paying for purchases from the 2024 holiday season.
Mercifully, the survey didn’t ask about leftover expenses from the year before that.
Let’s play a game
Which means it’s time again to play my favorite seasonal time-travel game. The rules are simple. Imagine you can visit any year in the past, and you must prepare a shopping list for Christmas from newspapers or catalogues of the day. Oh, and your salary is the same as it is today. Pretend as if inflation never happened. Otherwise this wouldn’t be any fun.
This year, I have chosen 1925, exactly 100 years ago. For curiosity’s sake, a simple inflation calculator tells me $1 in 2025 would be worth 5 cents in 1925, or $1 then would be $20 today. But we’re not worrying about that. It will suffice to know you are filthy rich in 1925, no matter how little you think you earn.
The first thing I do is turn to the classified section of the Deseret News in early December of 1925 (courtesy of newspapers.com). I know I will be the hit of Christmas morning if I give out real estate. As expected, I find homes of various types going for an average of about $5,000 each.
What I could buy
That includes a five-room bungalow on the city’s southeast side, wherever that is in 1925. It has wood floors and a tile mantle and is, the ad says, “artistically decorated.” It is being sold at a “big sacrifice.” But, even with 2025 dollars, $5,000 apiece will quickly deplete my savings account, especially if my ancestors from that time period are visiting, so I decide to turn a few pages back.
Some place called the Michigan Furniture Company on South State is advertising “Christmas gifts that are always appreciated.” How can I go wrong? I can buy a leather rocker for $9.55, a young boy’s wagon for $1.45 or a doll buggy for $2.65.
I can “make it an electrical Christmas” at a place called Schramm-Johnson Drugs. As intriguing as that sounds, the best I can do there is an electric flat iron for $3.49 or a waffle iron for $9, which seems expensive. Did that bungalow on the southeast side have electricity?
A small classified ad tells me about white gold wristwatches on sale for $8.50 apiece.
A tempting ad from The Radio Shop on 200 South offers a “Nu-tone” radio, which is pictured stuffed indelicately into a Christmas stocking. “Times have changed,” the ad says. “Formerly, Santa Claus brought toys which in the course of a few months were broken or worn out. Nowadays, he brings a radio set which is a source of joy for many years. Be up to the times.”
On another page, I see a lineup of everything I can hear with that radio, including stock reports, various concerts and, at 11 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, dancing, which must sound remarkable.
Or not.
Things of lasting value
It doesn’t take long to come to the realization that always takes over when I play this game. None of these things has any lasting value, other than perhaps to a modern collector. But few, if any, will survive 100 years.
The rocker and the toys will wear out. The waffle iron will stop heating up, the watch will die, and even the house will require a lot of work to stay up with the times. I can be as rich as a Rockefeller in 1925 and still not get a radio with a bluetooth connection. Santa really still was, and always will be, delivering stuff that breaks, wears out or appears hopelessly behind the times.
In some ways, this is ironic.
The purpose of Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, whose ministry focused on diverting people’s attention from worldly things and to “lay up … treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.”
A few weeks ago, the National Retail Federation predicted that retail sales in November and December this year will surpass $1 trillion for the first time, a growth of more than 3.7% over last year.
“We remain bullish about the holiday shopping season,” NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said in a press release.
There is nothing wrong with the gift-giving tradition at Christmas, so long as things of lasting value aren’t ignored.
As I write this, my inbox keeps growing. Amazon wants me to stop writing because it says it has “found something” for me.
I doubt it is something anyone would want or care about a century from now.