Christmas in San Antonio

San Antonio is home to many Christmas traditions, some of which continue today and some of which are no longer practiced. The picture files at the DRT Library document some of ways in which San Antonians have enjoyed the holiday season.

The first photograph, taken in December 1922, shows a Christmas tree in Alamo Plaza. According to a November 25, 2006 article in the San Antonio Express-News, the tradition of a tree in front of the Alamo dates to 1914, “when the local Rotary Club put up an artificial tree for poor and homeless children and showered them with toys and sweets.” In fact, the sign to the left of the tree in the picture says “Rotary Christmas Tree…Dec. 22, 1922.” In later years, the city of San Antonio was responsible for the Alamo tree, and beginning in 1986 a live tree was sponsored each year by a grocery store.

Christmas tree in Alamo Plaza, December 1922. (SC5029.1)

In the below photograph, residents of Boysville enjoy a visit from Santa in 1952. The history of Boysville dates to 1943, when Reverend Don Holliman sought to help the orphaned, homeless, and abandoned boys he observed in Travis Park. As stated at Boysville’s website, “police picked these boys up from the park in an effort to provide some safety and shelter for them,” but “because they had no other place to take them the police took them to a detention center even though they had not committed a crime.” Known as “A Home with a Heart for Boys,” Boysville provided a safe and caring environment for boys, and today continues to provide boys and girls with food, shelter, clothing, medical care, community, and access to education.

Children at Boysville visiting with Santa, 1952. (SCElicson.08.005)

The final photograph shows Joske’s famous forty-foot fiberglass Santa being hoisted and positioned onto the roof of the department store in downtown San Antonio. Julius Joske, a German Jewish immigrant, opened his dry goods store near Main Plaza around 1867; after several relocations and name changes, Joske Brothers opened at the corner of East Commerce and Alamo Streets in 1887. This flagship store became known as “The Big Store.” In 1936, a joint venture between Joske’s and the city of San Antonio turned the store into the first fully air-conditioned store in Texas. By 1953, Joske’s boasted a slogan of “the biggest store in the biggest state” and its 551,000 square foot, five-story store was the largest department store west of the Mississippi River, a distinction it held until its closure in 1987.

Santa Claus on the roof of Joske's department store, downtown San Antonio, circa 1950-1970. (SCElicson.08.001)

Joske’s was known for its elaborate Christmas decorations, which included holiday window displays and the elaborate fourth-floor Fantasyland, where children saw a winter forest, a miniature town square, and Talking Bears while standing in line with their parents to see Santa. The outdoor Santa enjoyed a commanding view of downtown San Antonio from the 1950s to the 1970s; while he was brought out of retirement in 1994, in 1997 he was severely damaged in a windstorm and permanently removed from the building’s roof.

Merry Christmas!

Click here for a full citation of the documents and images included in this entry.

Historic Christmas Cards

The library’s DRT 2 Ephemera Collection contains three examples of Christmas cards that reflect changing trends in card format and style during the first decades of the twentieth century.

The postcard below – postmarked in San Antonio on December 20, 1905 and sent to Miss Stella Faust in New Braunfels – demonstrates the boom in Christmas “penny postcards” that were popular after the turn of the century. The increasing popularity of these inexpensive cards, which were largely mass-produced in Germany and were cheaper to mail than cards, ended the manufacture of elaborate Victorian Era cards. The Christmas postcard remained popular in the United States until World War I, which ceased the import of German goods and stimulated the development of a domestic greeting card industry.

Christmas postcard from 1905.

The other two Christmas cards in the DRT collection are from the 1930s. During this decade, the folded card familiar today replaced single-sided cards and became the standard format. Like other folded cards from the time, the first card below has a picture and short greeting on the outside with a message, in this case a four line poem, inside. That single-sided cards were still being used is reflected by the second card, which is dated 1937 and was sent by Adina De Zavala, an early member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas who was instrumental in preserving the Alamo, and her sister and fellow DRT member, Mary.

The poem inside this 1932 folded card reads: "Across a bridge of pleasant thought / This old greeting will stray / They bring the same old-fashioned words / We like so well to say."

A 1937 single-sided Christmas card from DRT members and sisters Adina and Mary De Zavala.

While the practice of sending greeting cards can be traced back to the ancient Chinese and the early Egyptians, the history of modern greeting cards began in 1843. Englishman Sir Henry Cole, seeking to end the cumbersome task of hand-writing letters to many acquaintances, commissioned John Calcott (alternately Callcott) Horsley to create an image and message that could be duplicated for everyone on his list. Horsely lithographed and hand-colored 1,000 copies of this first commercial Christmas card; only twelve of them are known to still exist. Click here to see a picture of Horsley’s card.

Christmas cards were fairly rare in the United States until German lithographer Louis Prang began printing commercial cards in 1875. Before that, Americans who wanted Christmas cards generally had to pay a high price from a limited selection of cards imported from Europe, while others used business cards embellished with holiday ornamentation. Greeting cards quickly became popular among Americans, and Prang’s were the most popular ones available in the late nineteenth century; by 1881 he printed almost five million cards each year. However, Prang, whose cards ranged in price from seventy-five cents to $1.25 each, could not compete with the less expensive cards offered by other manufacturers, particularly those from Germany. In the 1890s, Prang abandoned his business.

Information for this entry came from a website compiled by private collector Greg Livaudais of Metairie, Louisiana, that explores the history of Christmas cards and provides numerous examples from the author’s personal collection of over 7,800 Christmas cards dating from 1864 to the present.

Click here for a full citation of the documents and images included in this entry.