Life, 1911-12-07 · page 58 of 112
Life — December 7, 1911 — page 58: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a satirical piece mocking New Thought and yoga-influenced spiritual movements popular in early 20th-century America. The "Christmas Imaginary Present Giving Company," managed by "Gee Ime Mit" (a play on "Gee, I'm it"), parodies how wealthy people might use trendy spiritualism to avoid actual Christmas obligations. The joke targets several absurdities: subscribers pay real money for an "imaginary" gift service; they receive "mental dollars" as currency; the company claims to read minds via "espionage over the minds of everyone" to select perfect gifts; and practitioners achieve results through passive meditation and visualizing blue discs with yellow centers. The satire critiques both consumerism (expensive subscriptions for nothing tangible) and pseudo-spiritual fads that promised shortcuts to life's problems. By suggesting people can satisfy Christmas obligations through imagination alone—no actual shopping, no real gifts—Life magazine mocks the era's fascination with mental science and New Thought philosophy as elaborate excuses for avoiding human connection.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
mE RRS ES Lead the Mental Christmas Life By Joining the Imaginary Present Giving Company You Save Yourselves a World of Trouble— Kissing HY not get rid of all the Christmas worry by join- ing the Christmas Imaginary Present Giving Company, just sanized by Gee Ime Mit, the manager of Laire’s Thought Bureau? The Imaginary Lire now has a circulation of about fifty mil- lions; subscription, one hundred dollars a year, payable in advance; advertising rates, two hun- dred mental dollars a line. wish mental If you to become a subscriber, not only to the Imaginary Lire, but also to the Christ- mas — Leagu just want to be one, and send us five mental dollars as a guarantee of good ith. We will get it; our perfected Yogi department never lets anything get by. In the meantime, avoid all Christ- mas worry. To do this send this year only imaginary presents. It's the in- tention that counts anyway; the purer the intention, the better the gift. Immediately upon reading this send us a thought impulse to subscribe; by return vibration you will get an ac- knowledgment in due form, together with a receipt; file this away in your subliminal future reference. The moment you become a member of the Christmas Imaginary Present Giving League your happiness will be- gin; you will experience all the joy of Christmas without its annoyance. No shopping in advance. No tips. No straining after what to give your friends; we do it all. Please be guided by the following formula: First, place yourself in a passive at- titude. No matter where you are—in a trolley, subway, air ship or on the consciousness for Under the Mistletoe—A ocean—imagine you are a jelly fish and permit the great life currents to flow through your mental consciousness. Remain in this condition for five min- utes or so until you begin to feel men- tal thrills. How can you tell a men- tal thrill? In this manner: Close your eyes and if you see a blue dise with a yellow center you may know you are on the threshold of a thrill; hold this as long as possible. You will kno It is impossible to describe the exact sensation, except that it feels as if you had been suddenly shot up in an ele- vator, The moment you begin to feel the thrill make mental list of all the friends you have in the world. nd their names along the line to our Yogi department, with enough imaginary dollars, to cover the cost of the pres- ents. If you have a hundred friends, send us a couple of thousand; this will give cach of them a nice gift. We deduct a small commission. Do not name the gift; we do all that. Our system of espionage over the minds of everyone enables us to select just the right thing for Christ- mas. On Christmas morning, when you wake up, immediately place yourself in the aforesaid passive attitude and you will begin to receive impressions of gratitude for what you have done. It will thrill you strangely; you will hear (mentally, of course) such words as: “Just what I wanted.” “How could you gu that I have heen crazy for this?” “Tt was just lovely of you to think of me in this way; and so unex- pected!” ete. Please understand that under our system no one is omitted; if you have some friend from whom for several years you have been trying to cut loose and give no Christmas present, you are spared the annoyance of receiving a handsome gift from him when you haven’t sent him any yourself, We ar- range all this. Choice of Stars We attend to all of your mental shopping. If you desire a Christmas tree, we put up an imaginary one in your house for a mere song. Do you wish to kiss a pretty girl under the mistletoe? Subscribe at once and we will give you your choice of a hundred stars of the first mag- nitude; in this case, by a special in- sulating process, we secure you against too many thrills. Try a special Christmas house party. All mental. No servants leaving at critical moments. No guests who talk interminably. Constant vibration of Christmas joy without any friction. For one thousand imaginary di we will levitate one of our mental Santa Clauses to spend Christmas at your home and amuse the children; he will do everything; trim the mental tree, hang up the imaginary stockings, come down the dream chimney and present them with enough thought presents to last them through the ye Address Ger Ime Mit. (He will get it.) “SETTING THE TABLE IN A ROAR” comicbooks#eoml