The children’s books holiday shopping guide was going to be my farewell to 1920, but I’m back in Cape Town after an unexpectedly long sojourn in DC, and while all my friends there are longing for summer weather and the beach I’m pining for snow.*

And where better to find snow (in Cape Town, anyway) than on the cover of a December 1920 magazine?

The award for snowiest magazine cover goes to Helen Dryden at Vogue,

followed by Motor,

Scribner’s,

and The Farmer’s Wife, which consistently punches above its weight cover-wise.

Santa makes an appearance on the Saturday Evening Post’s Norman Rockwell cover,

on the Ladies’ Home Journal,

and, naturally, on St. Nicholas.

One of Santa’s helpers is hard at work on the Saturday Evening Post.

There’s holiday greenery at Modern Priscilla

and Century

and House & Garden.

They’re wrapping presents at Woman’s Home Companion

and hoping for presents at Literary Digest.

Screenland

and The Smart Set

pay halfhearted tribute to the holidays with red-and-green color schemes.

Children on Norman Rockwell’s Life cover ask, “Is he coming?”,

along with the children on Maclean’s up in Canada

and millions of children around the world tonight, and a hundred years ago tonight.

Happy holidays to all!

*Not that they actually have snow in DC at the moment, or pretty much ever at Christmas, but it did snow a week after I left. Which quickly turned into slush and then into ice, as my friends, who have little patience for my foul-weather nostalgia, were quick to remind me.