The first Christmas after the end of World War II - 1945


When I saw this ad on the Duke University site, I had an immediate emotional feeling of how wonderful it must have been to celebrate the first Christmas after the end of World War II, in 1945. Time-travel with me. This is an ad for Greyhound, and after reading the copy I had a real sense of being there at that time, and place. Let's take a look:


OK, it's kinda wordy, so I'll sum it up for you, the war is over, and for the past four years the policy in the United States was to avoid travel, but now that's all changed. It's time to get back to normal, and it's the reason that the war was fought.

When I first studied advertising, back at ASU, I remember learning that people who went shopping for drills didn't want drills, they wanted holes in the wall, and this ad really delivers on what people wanted. They wanted to move around the country, to be home for Christmas, to see loved ones. Sometimes ordinary things, like buses, can create extraordinary things.

Bing Crosby had been singing "I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams" for years, and now the dream had come true. Merry Christmas!

Images from the Duke University Library Digital Collections.
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