Rare Books and Special Collections is open Monday through Thursday this week (December 16-19, 2024)—appointments are recommended. We will then be closed from Friday, December 20, 2024, through Wednesday, January 1, 2025, in observance of the campus-wide holiday break for all faculty, staff, and students.
Special Collections will reopen on Thursday, January 2, 2025.
This is the last blog post for 2024.
Happy Holidays to you and yours from
Notre Dame’s Rare Books and Special Collections!
by Greg Bond, Sports Archivist and Curator, Joyce Sports Research Collection
This post features the December 1909, “Christmas Number-American Sports,” catalog published by Boston-based sporting goods company Iver Johnson. The colorful catalog over depicts Santa Claus driving an automobile—a relatively new popular consumer item in the first decade of the twentieth century—stuffed with presents from the Iver Johnson catalog. Santa’s goodies include sleds, toboggans, skis, snowshoes, winter caps, suitcases, cameras, flags and wrapped presents.
Founded in the 1870s, Iver Johnson was best known for selling bicycles and firearms, but, as shown throughout this 30-page catalog, the company sold a wide range of sporting goods, household wares, and other items. This Iver Johnson catalog (EPH 5036-7) is part of the Joyce Sports Research Collection’s Sporting Goods Catalog Collection (EPH 5036), which is open and available to researchers.
The “Christmas Number” catalog particularly featured Iver Johnson’s winter sports toys and products, as seen in this picture of children pulling their sheds through a snowy field.
The catalog also advertised an oversized toboggan that looked to seat five to six children with a bit of doggerel:
Just a glimpse in passing
But, O you—
No wonder every child wants
a Flexible Flyer and most
young people a Double Runner
Iver Johnson is the Place to Buy Either.
When you buy the sleds,
look at the
Skates—Skees—Snow Shoes.
For undecided shoppers, the catalog also helpfully printed a guide called “Christmas Gifts You Can Get at Iver Johnson’s” broken down into the categories of “Father,” “Mother,” “Sister,” and “Brother.”
So, if any readers are doing some last-minute holiday shopping for their loved ones, perhaps they can find inspiration from the 1909 Iver Johnson Christmas Number catalog!
