Reindeer gloves and boxes of snuff
WHAT on earth are we going to buy for Christmas? Familiar words today. But a hundred years ago our ancestors were facing exactly the same headache.
The shopkeepers of Cork understood their difficulties well. Mayne’s China Hall in Patrick Street recognised that customers needed help with their Christmas gifts. Mangan’s, which for many years had made the Christmas present trade “a special study”, called it “the annual problem” and headed up its advert in the Cork Examiner on Dec 7, 1912, with the vexed question “What shall I give?”.
