Today we’re going to take a trip back in time to December 1976, the end of our nation’s bicentennial year. My family, of course, watched the Bicentennial festivities on the BBC, as we spent that summer in Ireland. Viewed from afar, Jimmy Carter seemed incongruous, but by December he was our president, and someone was working fast at the Family Circle editorial offices, because the issue included a piece on “Christmas with the Jimmy Carters.” The article included the traditional dinner menu served by Miss Allie, the new first mother-in-law:
Hey, you know how to tell if someone is really old? Ask them if they know what a “flashcube” is. The environmental movement was in its first flower (the first Earth Day was in 1970), and one of its earliest fruits was the tendency to “recycle” household objects, as with these ornaments.
You’ll see more “recycled” ornaments before this calendar is done, but it was a year-round task. When I worked at the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Shop, there were these two ladies who lived next door—everybody called them Pete and RePete—and they used to collect styrofoam egg cartons and sew them together with yarn to make wastebaskets.
But I digress. Here’s a page of Mattel toys to admire. I imagine most of us either had or desperately coveted one of these toys when we were growing up:
While we’re thinking about presents, check this out: True Value Hardware had a whole 8-page booklet bound into the magazine, each page chock-full of cool holiday gifts that could be purchased at the hardware store:
Wait, let me pull up a detail for you:
I remember playing Pong, the world’s first and most boring video game, but I don’t remember where I played it. $59.95 was big bucks in those days so there was no way we invested in the home version.
There was also a special edition of Mr. Coffee that was newly available for Christmas 1976:
This new one is specially engineered to avoid waste by raising the coffee grounds to the correct level, so you get perfect coffee whether you’re making 2 cups or 10. Clearly this is a good reason to toss your old Mr. Coffee and get a new one. “And while you’re at it, gift wrap some genuine Mr. Coffee filters, too.” Guaranteed to elicit a strong reaction on Christmas morning, although perhaps not the one intended.
Christmas, of course, means baking cookies with Mom:
And because casual entertaining means pulling out ALL the stops, why settle for just Jello molds and mayonnaise salads when you can have mayonnaise salad gelatin molds?
That pie, tho.
I’ll close for this evening with some images of Christmas dinner and desserts, showing off the absolute peak of 1970s fancy-food styling. Enjoy!
