Today’s Frills Were Yesterday’s Comforts

It's easy for me to look at what we indulge in today and feel guilty, comparing our time to the austerity of the past. However, historical narratives and artifacts tell me that our luxuries--excluding advanced technologies such as iPhones--are nothing new. I'm not including in this comparison the sumptuous lifestyles of the past's wealthy families, who spent millions of dollars on multiple homes, handmade dresses, and fancy furniture and art. Rather, this post is about regular middle-class folks who pursued some of the same comforts you and I enjoy today.

Christmas Gifts. Sometimes, I feel a little weird shopping around late in the year to find an item for an individual who has already been blessed with many possessions. And with our entire extended family swapping gifts, our living room gets pretty full of brightly wrapped things. I do see that we often get plenty of use and appreciation for these, but have wondered sometimes whether we're going too far.

Yet the story told in Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West, where a pair of young women from Auburn, New York travel to the Denver area to become schoolteachers, tells me that our 1916 ancestors were very much caught up in Christmas gift-buying. For sure the titular women's concern is for the poor schoolchildren, but they put much energy into rallying friends back home into a gift collection effort. They saw the absence of presents as a real lack. If I'm remembering correctly, they also focused on finding the right gifts for family members. All their activity around the holidays gives me perspective on our buying patterns today, and I find the parallels between our culture and that of the young ladies to be reassuring.

Product Improvements. A dear older friend of mine once said that in the past, there weren't so many disposable items such as tissues. Handkerchiefs and other things were created to be used and re-used, and to her, this frugality was a positive trait. This statement stuck with me, and I've been thinking it over ever since. It struck me one day that there have always been product innovations that often improve aspects of our lives, and we can appreciate these advancements without feeling guilty.

I read once about the introduction of toilet paper, which would replace corn cobs and catalog pages, and how it took time and more than one marketing attempt for Americans to believe in this new luxury. Toilet paper is an improvement (and given Americans' emergency preparedness tendencies, apparently a major necessity), as it's cleaner and more effective than what we used to use. Facial tissues, also, are simply an improvement over handkerchiefs for blowing one's nose in a sanitary fashion, especially when one has a bad cold. Washing a used handkerchief just sounds gross. I hope the laundresses put those in the tub last.

In the same way, diapers and baby wipes are much better than the cloths babies had to wear in the distant past. I've heard or read that infants (in eighteenth-century England?) just had to sit in their dirtied garments until someone decided it was time to change them. While our more recent cloth diapers were an improvement, they had to be washed daily, and came with the hazards of safety pins. Absorbent disposable diapers make this a comfortable and more sanitary era for babies, even with the downside of all the extra trash.

Pets. We are crazy about our domesticated animals here in the States, and there's a big market for toys, special little clothes, and carriers for our cats and dogs. We may be just a wee bit over the top with this passion for pets, but there is evidence that people in other eras bonded with animals, too. We have that example in 2 Samuel chapter 12 where the prophet Nathan tells David a story about a poor family's little pet lamb being taken away from them, a story that turns out to be an analogy for David's stealing another man's wife. Moving forward in history, I recently saw a picture of an ancient family's memorial to their dog. Then there are photos from the 1800s of sitters posing with their cats--I believe I've seen more than one. Wealthy people had animals--that's no surprise. But it looks as if ordinary families cared for pets, too.

Face Creams. I'm a big one for various skin care products that claim to enhance one's aging skin, block the sun's rays, smooth out the face, etc. I've been known to talk about stocking up on lotions before any future economic collapse. So I was pleased that archeologists discovered a little pot of face cream from ancient Rome--with product still in it. I shared this picture on social media, wondering what would happen if I tried out the cream after it had aged all these centuries. The poor today pursue face creams, too, as I learned in Behind the Beautiful Forevers, where women living in a slum near the Mumbai, India airport valued them. And I've read about a somewhat poor American lady in the earlier part of the 1900s for whom it was important to purchase a product for her face. Whatever their efficacy, beauty-enhancing creams have been around for a long time.

Electronic Entertainment. I love listening to music, audiobooks, or podcasts while I'm working around the house. The portable entertainment makes time go by faster, and I actually get into vacuuming and dusting with high-energy music pulsing through my headphones. Yet I feel spoiled by this ability to access entertainment whenever I want in order to lighten the load our forebears carried in silence. But if I stop to reflect, I remember that the radio and record player have been around entertaining the masses for about a hundred years, and we still have recordings of the many programs and stories families gathered around to hear. My mom says that at fifteen, it was her all-day task to do the ironing for the family, and she spent this time listening to operas on the radio and falling in love with them.

Fast Food. Although we're bothered by the excess and unhealthy habits wrought by the availability of convenience foods, we can take comfort from the fact that ancient Rome had its version of McDonald's, too. Archeologists discovered a food vendor's counter where a hungry passerby could buy a quick meal. And in medieval Europe, there is evidence of a brisk trade in ready-made foods. Add to that the prevalence of street vendors selling a variety of delicious hot treats in countries such as Thailand and China, and I have to conclude that fast food is not so unnatural after all.

There's no question that we enjoy abundance like no other time in history. But a significant portion of what we have has already been around in one form or another--it's not logical for us to feel guilty for our conveniences. However, the need for moderation and restraint seems to be the common thread in the frills we invest in today, whether we like to Christmas shop, use disposable items, spoil our pets, buy cosmetics, indulge in entertainment, or add a large fry to our drive-through order.