Don’t get the wrong idea. Christmases in the days of World War II were not always weighted down with gloom and doom. Americans still wanted to deck the halls, to “make rather merry”, as Dickens’ Bob Cratchit put it, to celebrate the holiday. And they would. What would the holidays be, for instance, without a cup of Christmas cheer? A magazine advertisement for Schenley whiskey asked, amidst colorful drawings of elegantly dressed men and women laughing and flirting around a punch bowl: what does every woman want to know about a man? “That Christmas and New Year’s symbolize more to him now than ever before…that even with his war duties, he still keeps the holiday tradition, sending flowers to her and gifts of Old Schenley to his friends!”
At Christmas 1942, newspapers reported crowded stores and ringing cash registers. Sales easily topped 1941’s totals. In Cleveland, Ohio, business at one ompany were so brisk that employees received a $3000 holiday bonus.
In many ways in World War II, Americans were prosperous. Unemployment by war’s end plummeted to less than 2%. The Great Depression was finally over. Most everyone had a job and a steady income. Thus, in Phoenix, Arizona in 1942, authorities called off the annual Christmas party for poor children. They couldn’t find any to invite. In Fairview Village, Ohio, town residents got a welcome Christmas gift—a garbage collection. They’d gone without trash pickup for 6 weeks, due to a lack of manpower. Most men were either in the service or had other, war-related jobs.
But there remained many sacrifices to be made, too. A young boy growing up in Los Altos, New Mexico during the war was told by his parents that due to rationing and the war, many toys wouldn’t be available. He should not expect there to be much under the tree. He often only received one Christmas present..
One couldn’t necessarily expect the usual Christmas sweets, either. Remember that sugar and butter were rationed. Often Christmas cooks had to make do with substitutes. Sometimes, mothers and grandmothers trying to make their usual Christmas cookies had to use “oleo” as a substitute for butter (“oleo” is short for “oleomargarine.”) But all agreed, then and later, that the cookies weren’t nearly as good.
It could be hard to find your usual Christmas turkey, or ham. For one thing, buying them used up a lot of meat ration stamps. What would you do for meat once the holidays were over, if you had no ration coupons left? Families would try anything to get by. For example, one thing you could do during the war was to save bacon grease. You could turn the grease in to a government office, and get extra meat ration stamps in return. Why? Because war munitions factories used bacon grease to make bombs and other forms of ammunition. Many a family secured a turkey at Christmas time by having someone haul containers of bacon grease down snow-covered sidewalks, to get the coupons needed.
Often, all of the families and friends in a neighborhood were short on some kind of food they needed for the holidays. Nobody ever had enough ration stamps. So, during the war, families would gather around kitchen tables, with their evergreen centerpieces and mistletoe hanging nearby, place their ration stamps in front of them, and trade with each other for things they needed. Maybe you had plenty of coffee ration coupons, but no sugar stamps; and another family somehow had the opposite situation. Thus would come the trading; and thus was made many a holiday, with families gathering, and sharing, and helping each other through the tough times.
A woman growing up in Detroit during World War II remembered that, one year, her family simply couldn’t afford to get a Christmas tree. So they instead made a “Christmas table.” “We festooned the top and legs of a card table with white pine and hemlock branches we’d collected,” she recalled, “and arranged our presents under the table. Christmas morning, as we opened our presents, we were proud of our sacrifice.”
With gasoline rationing, it could be very difficult to travel and see family at the holidays. One young married couple, from Kansas City, Missouri, at Christmas 1943 wanted to go see the wife’s mother and father in Wichita, Kansas. They literally had to save 3-gallon gas ration stamps for nearly 6 months in order to be able to get the gas they’d need for the trip. But they got there. Yet then, they could only get home again because the wife’s father was a farmer and could give them spare gas (farmers were entitled to extra gas ration coupons). Otherwise they would have been stranded.
Montgomery, Alabama had a long-time Christmas tradition--the city would set off fireworks on Christmas Eve or Christmas night. But during the war, all firecrackers were silenced. City fathers agreed, according to the local paper, that it was not right to celebrate in that way “with Uncle Sam and his allies at grips with the Axis to preserve freedom.”
But, as always, somewhere, somehow, the Christmas spirit always shone through. Take what happened in rural Oklahoma at Christmas 1943. There, a young man originally from Virginia served his country at the Naval Air Station in Clinton, Oklahoma. He was depressed. Here it was the holiday season, and he was stuck in a rural, desolate area, far from home. But a buddy of his, who fortunately was originally from Oklahoma, took him along as he went home for Christmas, and so our lonely Virginian found himself playing the piano in the parlor of his friend’s home that Christmas Eve.
But then suddenly came news from the local Catholic church. The nun who usually played the organ at church, and who was scheduled to play at that evening’s Midnight Mass, was very sick. She wouldn’t be able to play. They needed a substitute. Well—all eyes quickly turned to our friend. He could play the piano; surely he could play the organ too?
And so at midnight that night, on Christmas Eve in another small town in Oklahoma, he found himself playing an unfamiliar organ at a convent church. But it went well. He accompanied the children’s choir smoothly and without incident, and later even did an impromptu riff off of “The Hallelujah Chorus.” The entire congregation thanked him effusively; and the nuns were so pleased that they gave him a special Christmas gift---a magnum of champagne from the convent’s cellar. It turned into a special memory for him.
But then, why wouldn’t it? Why wouldn’t he come up with the performance of his life? It was Christmas…
