By David Futrelle
Yesterday we took a look at some weirdly horny vintage Christmas ads, including a number featuring none other than Santa Claus getting his North Pole wet (well, by implication).
Today, I present you with some vintage ads celebrating the three classic Christmas gifts. No, I don;t mean gold, frankincense and myrrh. (Where can you even find myrrh anyway?) I mean alcohol, tobacco and firearms.
Truly, nothing says “Merry Christmas” like getting blackout drunk and vomiting into the fireplace.
Forget carefully picking out a Christmas gift for the man who has everything. Just get him a big ol bottle of booze — and hopefully he’ll give you one back!
Get so fucking drunk you start hallucinating creepy old rich dudes in top hats!
Replace your Christmas tree with bottles of scotch! Why the fuck not. IT’S YOUR FUCKING LIFE, LIVE IT HOW YOU WANT TO.
And if you run out of scotch, it doesn’t even matter! Sneak into the kitchen and drink an entire case of beer! Let your wife deal with the goddamn Christmas tree. LIKE YOU GIVE A SHIT WHAT THE TREE LOOKS LIKE.
I mean, how do you think Santa gets through Christmas, anyway? NON-STOP DRINKING.
I mean, look at him. He’s drunk as hell. HE’S NOT EVEN WEARING PANTS.
Now that we’re good and liquored-up, let’s move on to phase two: inhaling some sweet, sweet Christmas nicotine.
You know smoking is a truly blessed Christmas tradition because Santa himself indulges.
Boy, does he ever!
I mean, what better way to prepare for a night of going up and down chimneys than by smoking like one!
But don’t bogart those cigs! Make sure everyone has some!
YOU get a case of cigarettes! YOU get a case of cigarettes!  YOU get a case of cigarettes!  YOU get a case of cigarettes!
You don’t even have to fucking wrap them! They come in their own special Christmas cartons! Cases of ciggies for everyone!
It’s what RONALD REAGAN would have wanted!
And if your wife hates the smell of smoke as much as she hates the sight of you, screw her! Light up the stinkiest cigar you can find and blow that smoke right in her goddamn face! I mean, she might literally murder you in your sleep later, but what the hell, it’s worth it. 
Speaking of murder, let’s move on to the last part of our Christmas Troika: GUNS.
Give your kids guns!
Give your wife a gun!
Buy yourself a gun! And hide it under your pillow!
That last one is a little creepier than maybe the advertisers intended, huh?
Anyway, now that you’re drunk as a skunk, reeking of stale smoke, and armed to the teeth, it’s time to enjoy the CHRISTMAS MEAT!
Turkey, ham, it doesn’t matter so long as it’s a huge hunk of DEAD FLESH.
MEAT
MEAT
MEAT
And while you’re preparing your CHRISTMAS MEAT why not, I dunno, just go wild and PUT CAULIFLOWER IN THE JELLO, toss some RADISHES nearby and then SLATHER SOME MIRACLE WHIP ON TOP! I mean, who fucking cares?
Christmas truly is a blessed day.
CORRECTION: I fixed two egregious food-related errors.
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@Shadowplay: I do, but only if they’re fruit.
I suspect Santa *is* wearing pants, but the artist picked a horribly poor color choice, probably trying to reproduce the beige-y color of cowhide (think work gloves).
This is fake news. Trump has confirmed that Santa doesn’t exist.
(I suppose it’s no surprise that this father of five doesn’t know how to talk to kids)
Merry Christmas or Tuesday!
I’ve fixed my egregious food-related errors. Can’t believe I mistook Miracle Whip for mayo. That stuff (Miracle Whip) is nasty.
Alan, thanks for the x-mas mammoth!
Tobacco ads fascinate me. The products exist for no other reason than to get people addicted then take their money until they die but the ads are so cheerful. Could you imagine the exact same words and images, but for heroin or cocaine?
Sure, we’ve just legalized cannabis here in Canada, but I’m a little sad we won’t see anything like this for marijuana cigarettes.
Husbeast’s girlfriend had a Hogswatch party at the beginning of the month that was also a potluck. A lovely Russian fellow brought home made chicken aspic that was to die for. He told me (one of the only people brave enough to try it) that his secret was special gelatin he got from Amazon and that everyone should leave the boxes of Knox in the store*. The aspic had chicken chunks and carrots at the bottom. Yum!
That being said, the 50s – 80s saw some of the most egregious abuses of Jell-O** committed by humankind. I cannot to this day eat lime gelatin because of my mom’s favorite “salad” recipe that used it with carrots, celery and beef bullion in her favorite fancy copper mold. Yuk!
*I believe him!
**If you’d like to torture yourself and laugh a lot, I’d like to recommend the Mid-Century Menu blog. It’s not all Jell-O and not all horrible but some of it’s pretty gross and funny.
…….
I though it was mayonnaise that was the Condiment of Satan, not Miracle Whip! D:
As for Jello salads, there was an article back in the 1990-early 2000’s in the food section of the Chicago Tribune about those salads. The story was about how the Jello company was trying to reinvent those salads because yeah, those early recipes tended to produce monstrosities at best.
The new recipes they came up with actually looked pretty good, from what the pictures of them showed.
(I don’t eat Jello anything, unless it’s their puddings. There’s something about the texture of it that I just can’t tolerate eating. At all.)
Can you imagine how traumatic the smoking Santa ads might be for kids? “Mummy, the Surgeon General says Santa is going to get lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and maybe a complicated pregnancy!”
As a kid, I grew up in a Miracle Whip family. I ate it for years. As an adult, I finally discovered real mayonnaise, and I refuse to touch Miracle Whip again!
One of the regular Christmas staples here was a vegetable aspic: lemon jell-o, a little cranberry juice (not too much or it doesn’t set properly), with grated carrots and celery. Mayonnaise in jell-o is like unto an abomination, but this stuff is pretty good.
Funny enough, there were actually several guns under the tree in my household this Christmas. My oldest younger brother and stepbrother both got new rifles from my grandparents on Christmas Eve, and my other younger brother received a Taurus Judge and my mother a Kimber 9mm this morning. I joked that if I had known we were doing handguns for Christmas, I would have asked for my own personal favorite, the Beretta 92.
Booze is practically the centerpiece of my family Christmas. We don’t give gifts, we don’t have a tree. It’s just me, my brother and our parents having a few GnT’s and a meal and then sharing a bottle of whiskey. It’s lovely.
… oh… my… goodness….
I hadn’t added up the co$t of $moking cigarette$ for quite a while…. I quit when yellow brand (generic) cigarettes hit $1.25 a pack. My son quit about a year ago, he mentioned to me one day that he was amazed how much more money he has now.
In the “Whole family gets a gun!” image, I like the fact that the mother is wearing a khaki shirt and that the placement of the white-and-red numberal sort of makes it look like she’s wearing a Nazi armband at first glance.
Terrifying thought: how many murders were carried out with Christmas gift firearms?
Inquiring minds want to know.
So, random bits:
Schlitz guy is awfully… prissy for a dude evading decorating to go drink beer. I mean, that hand position is more suited for High Tea.
I see no reason to comment on the difference between mayo and Miracle Whip. They’re both foul, just in different ways. (I used to be less vocal about this, but for some reason, restaurants are incapable of using just a dab of either–if they put it on at all, it’s this giant glob that overwhelms the whole sandwich.)
That said, that recipe is truly terrifying.
Tabby Lavalamp:
Actually, if you go back far enough, you’ll see surprisingly similar ads for various patent medicines that were just some sort of delivery system for cocaine or heroin.
The “Soothing Syrup” contained 65 mg of morphine.
(I hope those image links work.)
Ah, heroin made by the Bayer dyeworks from way back when…good times. Hard to believe that the stuff was once marketed as a cure for morphine addiction, but it was. Just…not for very long.
Yes, I’m sure that cocaine was an instant cure for just about everything, too. Including life itself, if you took enough all at once.
Fun side note: Tallulah Bankhead’s last words were reportedly “Codeine…bourbon…” I’m guessing those were also the last things she ingested.
Mr Bluecat recalls an uncle of his who could never quite keep track of what age his nephew was, meaning he got a teddybear for Christmas of his 15th year, and a .22 for his eighth.
Mind you, he did spend a lot of time in a house his grandfather had made out of railway sleepers, with a secret gun cupboard (referred to as “The H’arsenal) and all the points knocked off the knives…
I hope everyone had a cool and refreshing Yule.
“Where can you even find myrrh anyway?”
At an Orthodox Christian Church store? That’s where it’s normally sold. At least that’s where I buy it from; not for religious reasons but because it smells nice.