Last week saw the annual reappearance of Black Friday, which apparently means the Christmas shopping season is now officially underway. Black Friday started life as an American tradition in which stores and other businesses began their Christmas build-up with sales and special offers that kicked off on the day after Thanksgiving.

There is some evidence to connect the development of Black Friday sales with the Santa parades often held in American towns and cities during the Thanksgiving period.

These parades, welcoming Santa to town (you better watch out…) for another Christmas, were often sponsored by local businesses and department stores – such as Macy’s in New York, held since 1924, and the Canadian store Eaton’s, which began its association with the Toronto parade as far back as 1905.

Naturally, these festive parades created excellent advertising opportunities for these businesses, and the high profile, heavily promoted seasonal sales associated with such advertising show how it was overtly designed to increase the number of people deciding to visit the store to do some Christmas Shopping by offering discounts on high value, in demand products – a tactic that clearly worked as it is still used by retailers on Black Friday in the 21st century.

As a result of such publicity, this has traditionally been the busiest shopping day of the year in the US. Many people would not be at work on the Friday after Thanksgiving having taken the two days before the weekend off, and would entertain themselves by heading to the shops. The growth of internet shopping, particularly during the COVID pandemic, may well have changed these footfall levels in some respects, although it’s probably too early to say definitively either way.

In recent years, the idea of Black Friday has spread to other countries. It is quite common in the UK now – and becoming more so – despite the fact that we do not celebrate Thanksgiving here. This year alone I received a fair few emails and texts from various retail outlets exorting me to check out their Black Friday bargains, including one from the Premier League football club I support…

Thinking about it some more, I suppose the nearest equivalent to Black Friday in the UK would be the first day of the Boxing Day/January sales, in as much as both involve people queueing outside shops from the early hours of the morning and frequent squabbles over the ‘best’ bargains (with occasional outbreaks of violence).

This brutally commercial side of Christmas is nothing new and modern-style adverts designed to persuade us to part with our hard-earned cash at this time of the year go back at least a century and probably even further – the oldest I found dates to 1869 (see below).

I’m fascinated by vintage advertising generally, and Christmas ads open an intriguing window onto the celebrations and gift fashions of the past. Our ancestors somehow seem more real when we have a better idea of what many of them hoped to find under the tree on Christmas morning.

If you haven’t even begun to think about this year’s Christmas shopping yet, worry not. Have a browse through the slideshow of vintage festive adverts from the USA, Canada, and Australia (plus a smattering of other places) below, and see if anything takes your fancy.

There’s something here for everyone, from toys and games for the kids, stocking fillers for all, and discount wrapping paper to watches, electricals of all kinds, typewriters, and musical instruments. There’s even a few ads for cigars, cigarettes and tobacco pipes – how things have changed!

And if you can’t afford it all? No problem! At least you can always apply for a Christmas loan (see below)…

Contemporary with some of the ads above, this newsreel snippet shows London shoppers in the run-up to Christmas 1945 – the first Christmas at peace since 1938. Despite shortages in the shops, these Londoners clearly want to celebrate the season. Arguably little has changed…

Fancy more Christmas already? Click here for over a decade’s worth of my festive posts!