by Tom Ewing
December 18, 2025
Bicycles and Christmas have been connected for almost one hundred fifty years, since the first popularization of wheeled cycles. In 1879, an editorial statement in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette told parents: “It will pay you to get your son a Bicycle for a Christmas gift — it is better than a horse. Eats nothing, and saves car fare.” In 1880, an advertisement in the Norfolk Virginian for John B Loughran’s store on Church Street invited Santa’s “young friends” to come see the stock of “Holiday Goods!” Velocipedes and bicycles were listed among the goods, and an illustration showed a bicycle with a large front wheel positioned next to Santa on a sleigh. The Richmond Daily Dispatch of December 9, 1880 included a tour of businesses selling Christmas gifts, with a final stop at John Does on Main Street, described as “the veritable headquarters of St Nicholas,” which include bicycles among the stock designed “to please all the little ones.” A few years later, an avertisement in the Sacramento Bee included the tag line, “A Christmas Present,” along with an illustration and a poem encouraging consumers to buy a Columbia bicycle.
By the 1890s, bicycles were even more widely advertised for Christmas gifts with images familiar to us now. John Wanamaker’s story advertised bicycles in the Philadelphia Inquirer with an illustration of Santa riding a bicycle, with a bag full of toys.
An advertisement for the Gray & Dudley hardware store in the Nashville Tennessean used the phrase “Christmas bicycles” to advertise gifts for boys and girls, with an illustration of a young rider on a bicycle.
The same page also included an advertisement for J. H. Fall depicting Santa Claus riding a bicycle with a full bag of toys across a snow covered roof.
In 1892, an advertisement for Osborn & Alexander in the San Francisco Morning Call included this prominent headline: “Boys, Girls, Men, Women All Want Bicycles!” along with illustrations of three different bicycles.
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