Time Magazine- December 24, 1965

            I chose the December 24, 1965 issue published on Christmas Eve. In contrast with the 1920s magazine I had looked at before, Time magazine in 1965 was centered on national affairs and the problems that affected Americans within their country. The cover of the magazine immediately caught my eye with a detailed and colorful diagram of the “space race” depicted on the cover and a banner across the corner stating “Rendezvous on the Road to the Moon.” Though the issue was published on the holiday, the cover completely ignored this in favor of a more scientific approach to the magazine. This issue of Time had both color and black-and-white print, but it was clear that black-and-white was still the norm for the magazine as the majority of the articles were not in color.

             Although the cover and the greater part of the magazine went over the affairs of the country, it was clear throughout the magazine that it was Christmas time in the United States. Contrary to what we would see in more recent magazines, the issue did not focus on the holiday season as a whole including all the holidays associated with every religion. Time clearly focuses on the Christian holiday of Christmas and proclaims “Merry Christmas” instead of the more neutral “Happy Holidays” that we use in many forms of publication today. One of the letters to the editor at the forefront of the magazine was written solely on the meaning of Christmas to American families and another of the letters contained a small comment which spoke of Bob Hope as a generous man with Christmas spirit who annually “gives to the overseas forces his greatest gift,” performing for them. One of the ads featured a furniture company that sent two hundred desks to the “North Pole,” Alaska, in the spirit of giving like Santa in order to show their generosity within the atmosphere of Christmas. Another ad gave season’s greetings from Time magazine in forty different languages that were made into shape of a red Christmas tree to wish all of the magazine’s readers a “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year.” The front page showed a picture of the Wilsons and the Johnsons, two prominent political families of the 1960s, after they had finished lighting a Christmas tree together. The picture seemed to symbolize the camaraderie of the country at Christmas time, even in the difficult times of war.

            I was drawn, not surprisingly, to the large amount of articles on the war in Vietnam and our current involvement in it. In the midst of Christmas, some of the articles had a spin on them about how the troops were coping at Christmas time in the middle of warfare. One article about how the troops had been given new terms for calling off the war was called “Ho’s Christmas Slam.” Another article detailed the story of Captain Rod who, after appealing to the public and securing provisions for a local orphanage in Vietnam for Christmas, was killed during a relief of a government outpost. I was impressed by the conscious acknowledgement that the articles showed of the reality of the war in Vietnam and its consequences for the American people. The articles did not seem to candy-coat the situation at hand in the effort to save face during the holiday season. Rather, it impressed the facts of the war and showed what was really happening on the warfront and with the soldiers overseas. The fear of communism was prevalent in most of the Foreign affairs’ articles. Fear of the war and further military deaths were forthcoming on the thoughts of Americans. Most of the foreign affairs that were acknowledged in the articles had something to do with another country’s war on communism or their involvement with the Vietnamese that would directly impact American war efforts. Even the movies at the time seemed to be affected by this sentiment; the popular titles of movies in the magazine were The Spy Who Came In from the Cold and Thunderball, both of which had to do with informants during the cold war spying on communist groups.

            In addition, I found the distribution of color print throughout the magazine to be quite telling of the time in which the magazine was printed. The first picture in color print besides the front cover was a bright and shiny ad for Ford in which a sleek blue car is shown on a street, seemingly against the backdrop of a park with monuments. Against the contrast of black-and-white letters, the blue Ford car draws your eye in immediately. The appeal of the advertisement was distinct in the magazine and the desire for the car in the picture was evident even for me, almost fifty years later. The next picture in color was a green advertisement announcing “A Christmas Prayer.” The New York Life Insurance Company broadcasted its message of planning for a future of blessings with the green ink that stood out vividly against the printed black-and-white articles next to it.

 Besides the advertisements, only two other sets of articles had colored pictures associated with them. They were the articles connected to the Christian churches and the space race. Seeing that these two articles had the most compelling pictures with them, vibrantly designed to catch the eye of the reader, I thought that these topics must have been the most important to the magazine when they published the issue and that they probably had the most funding by their sponsors in running the pictures as well. The emphasis on the Christian churches seemed to me to show the pervasiveness of the main religion in news. The ornate colored pictures of Christian cathedrals and religious symbols gave the impression that Christianity was the only recognized religion in the magazine. It seems to me that although the main religion in America is still Christianity today, we have made more accommodations for other cultures in our media than is evident in this issue of Time. Also, the pictures of the satellites that were sent out into space and the emphasis placed on them, with full pages dedicated to their illustration, indicated how important the matter of getting to the moon was to Americans at the end of the Cold War period. It seems that Americans in 1965 were determined to push science as far as they could in order to learn about getting to the moon, which they would successfully accomplish by the end of the decade.