The very first Christmas edition of Pony Magazine was in December 1949.
Life was very different to 2025. The war had ended just four years before, and rationing was still in place for many things. The magazine’s gift guides were far from extravagant, and the stress was on the true message of Christmas, albeit seen through a horsy lens.
There was lots of special Christmas content: a Christmas poem, story and competition, an article about Father Christmas, two separate (though short!) pieces on Christmas presents; and two whole pages of Percy’s Christmas party. Going to the circus at Christmas was something of a tradition at the time, and the Bertram Mills circus liberty horses got a double-page spread.
The birth of Christ was the focus of much of the coverage. Col C E G Hope, and David Murphy, who founded the magazine, knew each other through their membership of KEYS, the London branch of the Catholic Writers’ Guild, a Fleet Street association for Catholic journalists, and this first magazine reflected what Christmas meant to them: the Christ child at the centre.
How the religious emphasis on Christmas in this magazine matched up with other children’s magazines I alas do not know, only having the horsy variety of magazine. What I can tell you is that the Christmas 1949 edition of Riding magazine had nothing special for children at all—just the usual page of photographs of children and their ponies.
As well as the religious element of Christmas, getting together to celebrate was the important thing. The Christmas story has Jill and Adele meeting children from other lands and finding out about their Christmases, and Percy’s Christmas is two pages of partying.
Presents
Christmas presents and books were buried right at the back of the magazine—not quite an afterthought, but certainly not the main event they are in today’s magazines.
The book column was a regular feature, and mentioned just three books: The Horse and Hound Year Book, Hunting by Ear by Michael Berry and D W E Brock and We Hunted Hounds by Christine Pullein-Thompson—‘another certainty as a Christmas present’ said Col Hope: ‘… an exciting galloping book, true to Pullein-Thompson form, with plenty of breathless fun and also instruction.’ The Pony Parliament section added a couple more: Hildebrand by John Thorburn, and Scribbling Lark by Henry Williamson.
This is what you could expect if you followed the Christmas present guide: string gloves (with reinforced fingers for 11s 9d), a complete grooming kit in a bag, and a hunting whip with silver mount and thong for £3 10s, or a rather more reasonable riding crop for 25s. You might like a silk scarf from Moss Bross at £1 10s 4d, book tallies (a version of book tokens where you collected pictures and built up enough tallies to exchange for a book) or a rather unusual type of gift card from Scotts the hatters of Bond Street.
This worked in a way which sounded potentially painful for the giver: there was no value stated on the card, and it was known only to you and the shop. The recipient went off to the shop and bought whatever they wanted. If it was less, you got credit, but if it was more, you paid the difference. Potentially awkward if in your mind the recipient is going to go for a nice flat cap but they end up with the ritziest of silk toppers.
The adverts didn’t go in for Christmas in quite the way businesses do now: Major and Mrs Faudel-Phillips suggested you might like a fortnight’s riding and stable management at their establishment.
Daily Mail Publications suggested sensible gift books – not really a USP in today’s market. Otherwise, adverts were few and far between.
Christmas poem and story
The Christmas poem was called December in a Stable, by J.P, and here are the first few verses:
The nights are dark and cold once more
The stable light burns warm and dim:
And as I turn the yellow stray,
My thoughts tun on, to Him—to Him—To Him whose cradle was the hay
Whose watchmen were the gentle kine,
Who helpless in a stable lay,
A stable warm and dim like mine.The hay within the manger bars,
The horses standing peacefully,
The keen night air, the frosty stars
Foretell the Christmas mystery
Story
Stories were a regular feature in Pony right from the start, and as well as the ongoing serial, there was a special Christmas story by David Dimmock, illustrated by Myrtle Jerrett.
Jill and her cousin Adele are asleep in bed on Christmas Eve when Jill wakes up and sees their Christmas stockings are stuffed with presents. She wakes Adele, but then they hear something. They look outside and see a man on a horse – a stranger. Out they scoot, get their ponies ready, and off they all go to a snow covered wood. Lots of other children join them, from Holland, Norway, South Africa … which is a chance for the children to learn about each other’s Christmas customs.
“It’s funny,” said Jill. “We call come from different countries but we all keep Christmas in the same way and that thought alone brings us closer together. We have such good times and try to see that no one is left out. That really is why Christmas is so good.”
The guide agrees, “as long as you all keep the spirit of Christmas, the spirit which was brought to earth on that first Christmas Day so long ago by the Child Jesus.”
And then:
… the wood seemed to grow brighter than before. Between the trees appeared a figure of a child, clad all in white, with a wonderful brilliant light around his head. And all of a sudden Jill knew that she was seeing the Child Jesus of whom the guide had spoken.
The children join in It came upon the midnight clear and then Jill and Adele wake up – was it a dream? No, they think. They’ll never forget this Christmas Eve.
Competition
The competition wanted you to decide which present from a list of twenty to give to ten recipients. The two closest to the list the editor had chosen would get a prize: 12s 6d for first prize and 7s 6d for second.
If you fancy having a go at the competition yourself (alas no prizes here!) these are the lists:
Mr and Mrs Pastern and their four children, Gill (13), Peter (11), Jane (8) and Alistair (6); also Aunt Agatha, Uncle Henry Fetlock, and 21-year-old cousin Theophilus Palfrey, aged 21 and a poet. The children are all mad about riding. Aunt Agatha is very athletic and busy, while Uncle Henry likes doing nothing for as long as possible. Farmer Corncob, who provides the Pastern family with hay and forage and takes the children out riding, is also there.
You can choose one present for each person out of the following twenty items:
Bedroom slippers, a bit, a book on horses, a box of cigars, a dictionary, a doll, engagement book, fountain pen, gloves, grooming set (presumably for a horse), jodhpur boots, a riding whip, scent, tennis racket, lighter, powder compact, a puppy and a toy train.
And finally … the Christmas party
Percy the Przewalski horse was a sort of Pony Magazine mascot who had his own page. For Christmas, he had an entire two-page spread devoted to his Christmas Party. This is how it came about:
…after ignoring us for four whole weeks he had the impertinence to ask us if he could have two pages in the Christmas number all for himself. We were very blunt with him and said “No!” But being a friend of the printer he got his own way with this result … He’s invited many of our contributors along to his party and we must admit they seem to be enjoying themselves. But please don’t blame us for all this will you for it was Percy’s idea?
The contributors included the writers Josephine Pullein-Thompson, Lionel Dawson, Stanislaus Lynch and D Glyn Forest. Drawings were contributed by John Board and Cavesson.
Josephine Pullein-Thompson said:
As the clocks strike twelve on Christmas Eve all the cattle, horses and donkeys in the world can talk as we talk. I have often felt tempted to try to hear them, but remembering that “eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves,” I have refrained. It is easy to imagine the sliding back of bolts, the whispers, reminiscent of the end of term midnight feast; the clop of hoofs on the concrete as they gather in the hay barn. But what do they talk about, I wonder? Us—their riders and owners? Do they discuss the show season or tell hunting anecdotes? Do they moralize like Black Beauty and Ginger? Or do they talk of that stable in far-away Bethlehem and the first Christmas of all? As dawn breaks, bleak and grey, they go quietly back to their boxes and await the traditional carrots and the special Christmas breakfast.
And the party ended with Stanislaus Lynch saying:
“CEAD MILE FAILTE, Percy!” and I could hardly wish you anything better for a Christmas holiday … for that is the Irish for “A Hundred Thousand Welcomes”.
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