Popular Mechanics^TM Christmas 'Project-a-Plans'

This article pays tribute to the Popular Mechanics writers, editors, and craftspersons who set the standard for do-it-yourself outdoor Christmas displays in the early 1960s.

Back in those days, anything was possible. Every issue seemed to have articles about flying cars or some other "just-around-the-corner" development that has still not quite happened. And there were plenty of articles implying that anybody with a handful of power tools and a few dollars' worth of supplies could build attractive, useful furniture items, toolsheds, or even a fallout shelter that would hopefully keep your family just a little bit safer from the Ruskies.

There was no such thing as "don't try this at home," either, even for kids, to whom a good number of the projects were targeted. Hand your eleven-year-old a set of plans, a can of lead paint, and a band saw, and a positive learning experience was all but guaranteed.

No craft or technology was off the table, either. Popular Mechanics readers were expected to dabble in carpentery, automobile mechanics, electromechanics, electronics, hydraulics - about the only things they didn't encourage you to experiment with were medicine, psychology, or time travel.

But the overall "message" of that era was that anyone who was willing to try new things could build a better life for his or her family with a few weekend projects.

Some of the best news today is that all of these issues are now available online in the Google Books Archive, giving you immediate access to hundreds of projects that are still useful, as well as hundreds of hours of reminiscing

More to our purposes, those archives give modern audiences access to a series of Christmas projects that changed the winter landscape American front yards for decades. If you have trouble getting through to any of the links below, go to the Archive, navigate to the issues we mention, and click on the table of contents. I warn you though - if there's a "do-it-yourself" bone in your body, it could be hours before you "come up for air" again.

In today's climate of paranoia about Christmas paraphernalia getting into the wrong places, it may seem a little surprising to find so many Christmas projects in the '60's Popular Mechanics. Many indoor Christmas gifts and decoration projects were published, though most of those projects seem dated or at least forgettable today. But the Popular Mechanics outdoor projects were much more memorable. In fact, those projects decorated homes in every part of the country for years, and inspired thousands of home-grown efforts along similar lines.

Thanks again to the Google Archive folks who have made the old magazine pages available, and to the helpful people at Hearst.com who helped us track them down for this article.

1960 - Humble Beginnings - The Popular Mechanics outdoor Christmas projects started modestly enough. As an example, the December, 1960 issue's Christmas content included mostly indoor decorations and simple woodworking gift projects.

The same issue also provided a simple outdoor decoration, a traditional Santa for your front yard. You were supposed to draw a grid on a sheet of plywood and transfer the pattern a square at a time. In retrospect, this is a relatively "conservative" Santa who could have come along twenty+ years earlier, and would still be useful in any traditional displays. Hmm, that gives me an idea . . . .

The December, 1961 issue had only one indoor decoration, a "sugarplum house." But the best was yet to come . . .

1962 - a Project-a-Plan Outdoor Christmas project - In 1962, David Swartout, the magazine's premier wood project creator (along with an uncredited artist) provided a much more contemporary, whimsical project that could be produced by "anybody" with a hand-held jig-saw. The plans still contained a grid, but PM included a new twist, a little printout of the same plans that was small enough to cut out, put into a 35mm slide frame, and insert into your slide projector. (Remember, PM assumed that all of their suscribers were "early adopters" of any new technology, and in 1962, home slide projectors were "the wave of the future.")

If you were living in the stone age, you could use the grid the old fashioned way - dividing up the plywood into sections and drawing in the outline of the project one section at a time. PM's editors were so proud of this project that they featured it on the cover. By the way if you know who created the artwork for this whimsical Santa and his disgusted-looking reindeer, please contact us and let us know more about the artist.

The same article included a Santa in a Mercury capsule descending by parachute, and a garage-door reindeer-and-sleigh display that seems to be by a different artist, also unattributed.

By the way, this wasn't the first time that people had used painted plywood cutouts as outdoor Christmas decorations. As an example, Smethport, Pennsylvania pharmacist "Doc Johnson" had been selling hand-painted wooden outdoor decorations out of his pharmacy-turned-Christmas store since the 1930s. But PM's 1964 issue contained one of the first and the most ambitious efforts to put this craft into the hands of "ordinary" folks.

On a Personal Note - my dad was so impressed by this project that he bought the magazine, and all of the later magazines mentioned in this article, but for some reason he never actually got around to doing any of these projects. Maybe the cost of a sheet of plywood and three or four small cans of all-weather paint never fit into the Race's household's "blue-collar" budget. Maybe Dad just liked to see what all was available - he always set up some kind of Christmas display for passersby. At any rate, when I think about these delightful, and very doable projects, I also can't help remembering all those years when Mom and Dad cut back on "frills" so we kids could have the things we really needed, like saxophones and American Flyer trains. (I still have saxophones and trains, so I guess it 'stuck.')

1963 - "Make Your Yard a Christmas Card" - That was the theme of a series of projects credited to Swartout in the December, 1963 magazine. The example to the right seems to draw on early 1960s Hallmark Christmas card art for its inspiration. Other projects include a Santa who is stuck in a chimney, and a Santa who is locked outside the house while the reindeer stare out through the picture window.

Beyond the projects themselves, these articles inspired a wave of plywood Christmas "yard art" whose ripples still have effects today. As an example, the decoration to the right was made within the last few years. It is part of the Christmas display set up each year by Finlay, Ohio's Northwest Ohio Railroad Preservation organization, a museum that runs real scaled-down steam trains. Though, to my knowledge, this was never part of a PM "project-a-plan," the influence is obvious.

Note that even PM's most ambitious decorating projects were almost always in their December articles, rather than earlier. Of course, the December issue usually reached homes in mid-to-late November, and back in 1963, people didn't usually start setting out Christmas decorations until the second or third week of December. Nowadays you'd probably have to put this kind of article in the October issue to get any "traction."

1964 - Doorway Decorations - Swartout brought readers an article about eye-popping projects for your front door. The title project involves layering several plywood cutouts to provide a very three-dimensional display that is just a few inches deep. Of course, projects like this one could be used elsewhere in the front yard, and many of them were.

Other projects in this article included a pair of young carolers in choir robes and a Santa with a blinking nose who was suspended by a very long hat.

1965 - Santa Enters the Space Age In 1965, the contemporary santa from 1962 returned with a vengeance in three separate Project-A-Plan projects, all of which incorporated motion.

The most ambitious of this collection was the Mercury Capsule Santa, who, properly attached to a wall or gable, could seem to take flight as he left his reindeer choking in the rocket exhaust.

The cover article featured the whimsical Santa and reindeer in a situation that resembled their 1962 appearance, with the addition of a pulley that would raise and lower Santa toward the roof. In 2008, I saw a static painted-plywood display along the same lines in someone's front yard, but I have mislaid the photo - sorry about that. The cover painting gives us the only clue to the artist who created these great characters - the initials CEM under Santa's bag. Again, if you know who this artist was, please let us know, and we'll be sure to give him or her full credit.

Perhaps significantly, this article also included the whimsical Santa's last ride, a display you could cut from a single piece of cardboard. If you get the motors hooked up correctly, one reindeer bobbles his head as Santa thumbs for a ride.

In addition to the new projects, PM also advertised that you could order "project-a-plan" slides for previous years' projects. I doubt you can still order them, though.

1966 - One more project - This year's article had only one outdoor project, but it was a "doozie" - A very large mobile decorated with Disney characters authorized by the Disney studios. Each character also had enough detail to be blown up larger and used by itself. If you're a fan of Disney, check this craft out.

PM's outdoor Christmas display projects began "tapering off" after that:

• 1967's December issue has a nice article about outdoor Christmas lighting that emphasizes safety, followed by a repurposed silhouette project from an earlier issue, but nothing so ambitious as the earlier projects.

• 1968's November issue has an article about building a motorized outdor candle display.

The Gifts Go On - It's hard to say how many of these displays were actually built, but there's no question that these articles inspired thousands of similar displays in front yards around America.

Most of the displays built in the 1960s have long since faded. However, many displays inspired by those displays and similar projects are still being used today (a few are described in our article on Folk Art Outside Santa Displays.

Of course nobody uses slide projectors any more. For a time, folks would borrow overhead projectors from libraries or schools for this sort of project. Nowadays almost everyone knows someone who has a video projector that will serve the same purpose.

Please let us know if this article inspires you to dig into the Popular Mechanic's archives or elsewhere, to come up with your own plywood Christmas yard art this year. Photos welcome.

The largest display of painted plywood decorations I've ever seen in one place belongs to a railroad museum in Finlay, Ohio. They have a small steam-powered train on which you can get rides most of the year, but at Christmas they decorate the right-of-way with dozens of plywood decorations and thousands of lights. When I get a chance, I'll try to do a feature on that place as well.

Conclusion - Your Memories and Examples Wanted

We still have many things to say about outdoor decorations, historical and contemporary, and much to sort out. Please check back every so often for more memories and ideas, and please let us know if you have any ideas you'd like to share with our readers.

Paul and Shelia Race

www.familychristmasonline.com

Reader Feedback

Ron Snow, of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, writes:

In the early 70's my dad came across the plans for the Santa and Reindeer that were on the 1962 Popular Mechanics magazine, although the were in a set of books of plans from Popular Mechanics. He made them and the were a big hit in our neighborhood. My dad passed away about 14 years ago but about 2 years ago I found the display in his shed and touched up the paint and now the are front and center of my families Christmas display. This display and helping my dad build it always gave me found memories of Chistmas.

[A few weeks later, Ron got his display installed and sent me some photos, including this note:] My father modified the design to include a chimney made out of a fake brick panelling but the chimney did not survive over the years. I made a ladder to incorporate in the display to replace the chimney my father made. It shows Santa reaching through the ladder to try to reach the toy bag which I think helps add to the calamity going on in the display.

Helynn S., of Wisconsin, writes:

My parents made one of the standing Santas (with the pack over his back) when I was a child. As I remember it, my father did the cut-out work with a jigsaw and my mother did the painting. Santa stood in our front yard in Milwaukee with a white spot light shining on him. One year, my mother used my wagon and put some cardboard sides on it to make it look like a sled and then wrapped some empty boxes in foil paper...the sleigh now had gifts in it. When we moved to the country, Santa went with us and was displayed on the porch of the remodeled farmhouse my parents bought. Unfortunately, Santa is no longer around as he was sold at a rummage sale, when my parents retired and had to move to a smaller place.

Thanks for having the picture on your site and for bringing back some fun Christmas memories for me!

To return to the Outdoor Decorations page, click here.

To return to the Family Christmas Online^TM Home Page, click here.

• Folk Art Outside Santa Displays - Home-made creations, all unique in some way, that celebrate the big fellow's appearance.

• America's First Christmas Store - See how the hobby of Pharmacist Leonard Brynolf Johnson started two unique Christmas businesses, one of which decorated many front yards in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s.

  ---