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A look at Christmas in 1952

From 'electrified' Christmas trees to 17-inch TVs and a 'far from demanding' generation
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An 1952 advertisement in the Guelph Mercury promotes an "electrified Christmas tree."

Imagine being given a $5 bill in exchange for a $1 bill. That might not seem like such a big deal until you consider that it was 1952, and $5 was equal to more than $50 today.

The 'Lucky Dollar' promotion in Guelph’s downtown business district was just one of the events that marked the Christmas season 70 years ago. The Mercury published a list of 20 $1 bill serial numbers provided by the retail section of the Board of Trade. All you had to do was check the bills in your wallet or purse to see if you had a Lucky Dollar. If you had a winner, you just took it to the Board of Trade office in the YMCA building on Quebec St. to exchange for a crisp new five.

As the Mercury said, “Who couldn’t use another five with Christmas only days away?”

Billy Barrett of Waterloo Avenue probably didn’t understand he’d won a windfall of extra cash with the dollar bill his grandmother had given him as a birthday present. But then, Billy was only three years old.

The world was certainly a different place in that Christmas of 1952 than the one we know today. For one thing, the image on the dollar wasn’t that of young Queen Elizabeth II, it was still that of her father, King George VI, who had died the previous February.

Christmas shopping had a whole different theme to it. According to ads in the Mercury, husbands should “take Santa’s advice” and surprise their spouses on Christmas morning with a “Wife- saver” – an electric refrigerator, stove, vacuum cleaner or washing machine. Maybe an iron in her Christmas stocking?

Wives and kids couldn’t help but make husband/dad happy by giving him a shaving set or polo pyjamas. Among the popular gifts for little boys were electric trains and Meccano sets. The newspaper ads suggested that dolls were the best gifts for “little mothers.”

If you wanted to surprise your family with one of those new-fangled 17-inch television sets on Christmas morning, you could get one at Love’s Radio and Television shop on Macdonnell St. for $350 – about $3,900 in today’s money. That covered the cost of installation of aerials that would pick up broadcasts from Toronto and Buffalo. Of course, you could buy the TV on the installment plan. Finding one of those Lucky Dollars in your wallet would probably help with the first payment.

Or, if a TV was beyond your budget, you could get a complete, 102-piece artificial Christmas tree and outfit at Pioneer Furniture and Furnishings on Douglas St. for $14.95. You’d have it for many Christmases to come and it wouldn’t cost you another cent. And unlike the TVs of the time, the lights
had colour.

On Dec. 17, the Mercury published the famous response to a child’s question, “Is there a Santa Claus?” It was the newspaper column that included the iconic line, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” The column had originally appeared in the New York Sun in 1897, but the Mercury’s version had
Virginia explaining, “Papa says. ‘If you see it in the Mercury, it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth.”

That Christmas medical science was in the process of developing a tremendous gift for the human race – a vaccine to combat polio. The vaccine that would make the iron lung all but obsolete would be celebrated, not protested, around the world. In the Ontario Provincial Reformatory on the outskirts of Guelph, inmates gave their own Christmas gift to health care by voluntarily donating blood.

A spokesperson for the Red Cross expressed gratitude for this contribution to a humanitarian cause.

A roving Mercury reporter interviewed small children in Guelph’s downtown, and learned that “the younger generation is far from being demanding.” The “tots,” he wrote, were “moderate” in their demands on Santa.

Four-year-old Cheryl Anne of Albert St. said, “I want a real washing machine, just like
my Mummy’s.” Park Avenue’s Heather, also four, wanted a pink doll, “one that walks.” Bobby, age three-and-a-half, of Powell St. West, wanted a train. It didn’t have to be electric, he said. “Any train that goes around the track when you wind it will be okay.” The mother of four-year-old Glenys of Robinson
Avenue told the reporter, “Glenys asked for a cold and got it.”

The reporter put the general lack of selfishness on the part of the young kids down to “good training, the nearness of Christmas, or a combination of both.”

For those early members of what would come to be known as the “Baby Boom” generation, their world was already on the road to change that Christmas.

The Mercury speculated that Guelph’s population might one day exceed 50,000. To accommodate that kind of growth in Southern Ontario, a
new trans-provincial highway stretching from the Quebec border to Windsor was under construction.

The highway that the Mercury said would “cater to the needs of expanding Guelph” is now called the 401. People who were small kids in the Christmas of 1952 are now senior citizens, and maybe they drive that highway today, on their way to visit their own grandchildren for Christmas.