LIFE at Christmas: Part IV and last - 80 Years Ago (1936)

In its Christmas 1936 edition, LIFE magazine declared "Australian" actress Merle Oberon "the next movie queen". It added that Oberon's alleged birth in Tasmania was "a romantic fact" (I kid you not!). Oberon was, in fact, born Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson in Mumbai (then Bombay) on February 19, 1911, the daughter of a 12-year-old mother, Constance Selby (herself the daughter of a 14-year-old mother,  Charlotte Selby, a Eurasian from Sri Lanka [Ceylon] with part Māori heritage). Oberon suffered a stroke and died in Malibu, California, on November 23, 1979, aged 68.

With the abdication of her uncle, to marry an American divorcee, Britain's now Queen Elizabeth II became the new heir to the English throne.

Tattoos were LIFE news:

An updated version of this ad appeared in LIFE 20 years later, in the Christmas 1956 edition.

LIFE at Christmas: Part III - 70 Years Ago (1946)

LIFE at Christmas: Part II - 60 Years Ago (1956)

LIFE devoted its special Christmas edition of 1956 to a "state of the nation" look at "The American Woman: Her Achievements and Troubles". The image of an FBI typing pool, above, was spread across two pages of the magazine.

The sexes were still, apparently, at loggerheads, and women's lib a way off yet ...

But LIFE laid the facts on the line:

And this is what the 20-year-old American woman looked for in a prospective husband:

One of the featured women was Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who used a state-of-the-art Royal portable typewriter:

The only mention of the trade name Remington was for this electric razor. Cars were ENORMOUS - but very beautiful:

Howard Johnson's looked far healthier than McDonald's (and no doubt was), but spaghetti dinner from a packet? And sausages with maple sugar syrup? Yuck!

Women's fashion, like typewriters, had reached its zenith, and some of the "typical" young women of California, Texas, Paris and Israel packed rifles, but were eternally stunning nonetheless:

Still, it seemed that for most, a women's place remained in the home, albeit with all mod cons:

Yuletide punches looked absolutely delicious - I'm going to try these 60-year-old (and more) recipes this coming Christmas: