Take a break from being shocked by your post-holiday credit card bills and take a look at this instead: It’s Macy’s best-selling holiday gifts, all the way back in 1948. LIFE compiled a photo series of these items, along with the price and how many units were sold, and the numbers might surprise you. Looking at the photos below, we’ve arrived at three conclusions. One, the prices seem pretty revelatory compare to what things cost today — don’t you wish inflation wasn’t a thing? Two, the absence of technology (that simply wasn’t invented yet) is pretty refreshing (no big screen TVs to see here). And three, Christmas gifts back in the late forties used to be a lot simpler than they are today. Who knew that sets of canisters were such a holiday favorite?
