Collecting Vintage Christmas Themed Paper Dolls

Where Christmas Collectors meet Vintage Paper Doll Enthusiasts

Oct 23, 2009

Vintage Christmas Paper Dolls offer dazzling, rich lithographs, and novel, cheerful graphics for ephemera hunters, Christmas fanatics, and paper doll collectors alike.

The early 20th century, Victorian-era women’s magazines offer unique color lithohraphed pages featuring Home-Made-Christmas-Gift ideas, Christmas Decor Cut-Outs, Christmas attire for your pets, and Christmas menus, but perhaps the most imaginative are the Christmas paper doll pages.

Color Lithographed Pages from Early 20th Century Women's Magazines

The Ladies’ Home Journal has many richly lithographed Christmas-themed paper doll pages, for instance the intriguing "Betty Bonnet's Christmas Party", by Sheila Young, from December 1916, with several somber children dressed, uncomfortable, in their Christmas attire, along with their skinny, sad-sack Santa. (See picture below).

The Ladies' Home Journal also offered many playful, sometimes intricate, cut-out pages: "A Christmas Tree for the Dolls", from December 1911, with toys and ornaments to hang on your stand-up tree. Also "A Christmas Dinner for Lettie's Dolls", with furniture, dishes and food to cut-out and assemble a dinner setting for Lettie Lane's very little dolls (note that Lettie Lane, herself, is a small paper doll), also "The Children's Toy Shop" from December 1912, a color page of cut-outs to build a 3-D shop and assemble all the little toys that go inside it. The most elaborate of these is the Deco-era "The Night Before Christmas" cut-out page, with over 50 pieces to cut out and decorate the childrens' room with all the motifs of the Night Before Christmas story. (see picture below).

The Pictorial Review magazine featured a Dolly Dingle Christmas Paper Doll page, by Grace Drayton, in their December issue, almost every year, from 1912 to 1932. Including the December 1917 "Dolly Dingle Back Home again For a Good American Christmas" after her year of "Dolly Dingle's World Flight": Sick of all things French, Italian, and Japanese, Dolly Dingle celebrates all things Christmas and American in this 1917 two-page, exuberant spread. This just before the series where Dolly Dingle signs up as a Red Cross Nurse taking in War Orphans, and tending wounded soldiers during the violent, horrendous WWI-era.

Post WWI-era Christmas paper dolls: Magazines, Sunday Comics, and Commercial Paper Doll Books

The Betsy McCall Christmas paper dolls came faithfully in the December issue of McCall's magazine from 1951 to 1998, usually with a Santa or Reindeer outfit for her dachshund "Nosy".

Some of the most interesting Christmas themed paper dolls existed in the Sunday Newspaper color comic section. Brenda Starr, Tillie the Toiler, Fritzi Ritz, and Mopsy all had their Christmas editions. The unusual career girl: Brenda Starr – "Star Reporter" had a wardrobe to be envied, often with glamorous evening gowns, cocktail dresses, and fur coats. The 1952 Brenda Starr wardrobe featured a slinky red Christmas suit with white fur hood and trim. (Pictured below).

Merrill Publishing's "Little Miss Christmas and Holly Belle" was an extremely popular paper doll gift for girls in the 1960s. The thick cardboard paper dolls came with dresses intricately adorned with holly, bells, fir tree branches, mistletoe, gold glitter, ribbon, white fur, etc. (See picture below).

Christmas Themes within Modern Character Paper Doll Books

Also in this category are the modern Character paper doll books which include a Christmas theme: Whitman's Christmas Bears from 1984, Barbie Christmas Time, and A Very Brady Christmas.

The copyright of the article Collecting Vintage Christmas Themed Paper Dolls in Collectibles is owned by Polly White. Permission to republish Collecting Vintage Christmas Themed Paper Dolls in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.