{"id":1267,"date":"2025-12-19T14:47:59","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T14:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/?p=1267"},"modified":"2025-12-19T14:47:59","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T14:47:59","slug":"christmas-bicycles-1870s-1890s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/blog-posts\/christmas-bicycles-1870s-1890s\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Bicycles 1870s-1890s"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Tom Ewing<\/p>\n\n\n\n

December 18, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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: \u201cIt 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.\u201d In 1880, an advertisement in the Norfolk Virginian for John B Loughran\u2019s store on Church Street invited Santa\u2019s \u201cyoung friends\u201d to come see the stock of \u201cHoliday Goods!\u201d 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<\/a> of December 9, 1880 included a tour of businesses selling Christmas gifts, with a final stop at John Does on Main Street, described as \u201cthe veritable headquarters of St Nicholas,\u201d which include bicycles among the stock designed \u201cto please all the little ones.\u201d A few years later, an avertisement in the Sacramento Bee included the tag line, \u201cA Christmas Present,\u201d along with an illustration and a poem encouraging consumers to buy a Columbia bicycle.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By the 1890s, bicycles were even more widely advertised for Christmas gifts with images familiar to us now. John Wanamaker\u2019s story advertised bicycles in the Philadelphia Inquirer with an illustration of Santa riding a bicycle, with a bag full of toys. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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An advertisement for the Gray & Dudley hardware store in the Nashville Tennessean used the phrase \u201cChristmas bicycles\u201d to advertise gifts for boys and girls, with an illustration of a young rider on a bicycle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In 1892, an advertisement for Osborn & Alexander in the San Francisco Morning Call<\/a> included this prominent headline: \u201cBoys, Girls, Men, Women All Want Bicycles!\u201d along with illustrations of three different bicycles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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: \u201cIt will pay you to get your son a Bicycle for a Christmas gift — it is better than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1273,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions\/1273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}