One solution to the vexed question of how old Saint Nick could fill every child’s Christmas stocking on a single night was provided by the Ideal Toy Corporation in 1955. In this picture by Getty photographer Al Barry, Santa was revealed as mass produced, ubiquitous. The image of the conveyor belt of Santa heads minus suits and boots and sacks might have invited the usual pearl-clutching about the commercialisation of Christmas – but which 1950s child would have wanted it any other way?

Barry’s picture is included in a new collection of photographic festive nostalgia, A Very Vintage Christmas, which goes behind the scenes of winter wonderlands in the years between 1900 and 1980. As well as plastic Santa heads the collection includes images of the gigantic Macy’s Day parade Santa, of a battalion of chocolate Santas and of the famous Santa impersonator Lucky Squire, trimming his beard. Other traditions also excite economies of scale: there are production lines of novelty cracker twisters and cottage industries of bauble spanglers; warehouses of panettone processors, and Norfolk stately homes stuffed with turkeys. The joy of kitsch is set against the rawer emotions of the war years – sacks of mail stretching to the wintry horizon packed not with letters for Santa, but with missives to loved ones serving overseas – when Christmases “like the ones we used to know” were invested with collective hopes and dreams.

We might like to think our own family gathering has a set of unique traditions, but these images insist otherwise; conformity to the ideals set out in every Advent calendar have long been the keys to the most wonderful time of the year. Paper hats and roaring hearths and presents under the tree: the book provides evidence of that truism, that all happy Christmases are alike (but each unhappy Christmas is unhappy in its own way).

• A Very Vintage Christmas is published by Hoxton Mini Press (£18.95)