Digging back into the archives tonight.

From 1933 to 1965 Coca-Cola advertised in National Geographic. Some of the ads were within the covers, but usually the most popular were on the back cover.

I decided to go to my shelves tonight and grab a few issues that had Coca-Cola ads on the back cover.

This back cover is from December, 1936. Here we see Santa taking a break and enjoying a nice cold Coca-Cola.

The Coca-Cola Christmas advertisements are by Haddom Sundblom and the model for Santa was one of his neighbors.

Here is the December, 1937 issue of National Geographic. We see that Santa is raiding the refrigerator and has a turkey leg along with his bottle of Coca-Cola.

Seeing the refrigerator brings back memories. I am sure that many of you remember very similar ones with wire racks and small little freezer compartments.

‘The pause that refreshes‘ was an early catchphrase for Coca-Cola.

Here Old Santa is joined by a little girl. He says thanks for the ice-cold Coca-Cola.

The Christmas ads helped boost sales at a time of the year when sales were not as robust. No longer was Coca-Cola just to cool you down on a hot day. It was also so delicious with festive holiday food.

The December, 1938 issue is where the third Santa ad came from. I am going to take a closer look at this issue as it has some good articles about the Bible Lands. It will be interesting to compare what I have seen on recent trips to pictures taken almost 80 years ago.

Steven