The characteristic smell of Christmas these days isn't plum pudding or sage and onion - it's melting credit cards.

Watching a milling throng of shopping victims tottering around Bradford under the weight of hundredweights of consumer durables at the weekend started me wondering, in the words of the song, how long has this been going on?

Well, in 1933 the run-up to Christmas started in October - so that's nothing new.

But in those Depression-hit times the build-up, for readers of the Yorkshire Observer, was a modest one. Two days after Bonfire Night, readers could start collecting stamp-sized tokens from the paper - one each day - to make sure the child of their choice received the Yorkshire Observer Christmas Gift. This was not a stocking or a box but a sack, filled with goodies. These were:

A box camera, taking pictures three and a half by two and a half inches.

A Ulox set - a sort of mini-Meccano engineering set.

A pictures and story book.

A clown's face quoit game.

A clockwork toy - it could be a plane, a train or a petrol tanker.

A Christmas stocking of novelties,

An inflatable toy cat called Buttons.

A box of chocolate soldiers; and

A prize crossword puzzle.

The cost of all this was one and six (7.5p), plus a guarantee that you would buy the Observer, cut out the vouchers for 42 days and stick them on the special sheet provided. The paper even paid the cost of postage and delivery. That wasn't bad value - nowadays the cost of three such Christmas sacks wouldn't buy you a first class stamp!

The next year the paper offered prizes of £5, £3 and £2 to the winner and runners-up in a cinema competition (say £350 for first prize at today's prices) and continued with its favourite cause, the Cinderella Club, a precursor of the Help a Child at Christmas campaign.

"No poor child in Bradford shall be disappointed if the Cinderella Club can raise enough money to be Santa Claus to all of them" it announced below a picture of two urchins, their noses pressed against a toy shop window.

Certainly a lot of children would have had a disappointing Christmas - the Depression, which was to last until the outbreak of the Second World War, was just getting into its dismal stride.

After the war, austerity put a brake on Christmas until the 1950s boom, fuelled by television advertising, made consumption a part of the festive season.

Prime Minister Harold Macmillan declared that Britain had never had it so good - but one thing was certain: it would never have it as cheap again.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.