As World War II continued, it demanded even more sacrifices from the American people—even at Christmas time.
As Christmas 1943 approached, bad news continued to arrive. The casualty toll for U.S. troops on Tarawa rose to over 3700 killed or seriously wounded. People on America’s east coast were briefly panicked by the military’s warning of possible German U-boat attacks on the coastline. 17 Allied ships, meanwhile, sank off the coast of Italy as a result of a surprise German air attack.
The government instituted rationing for many food items, in order to avoid hoarding, shortages, and inflation. It led to problems. The city of Detroit, Michigan faced a meat shortage at Christmas. Its allotment of meat had been set, in a fair manner (or so the government believed), according to its population level of January 1941. But in the months since then, Detroit’s population had skyrocketed, inflated by the arrival of over 300,000 new workers, due to the immense number of war-related factory jobs available there. So now there were too many people, and not nearly enough turkey and ham for their Christmas meals. Many had to do without their usual holiday fare.
Many localities during World War II banned outdoor Christmas lights, thanks to wartime blackout requirements (outdoor lights shining brightly at night, authorities feared, could draw enemy bombers). “Christmas,” said one newspaper, “has moved indoors.”
In other towns, Christmas trees were scarce; lumber was needed for the war effort.
Gasoline was of course strictly rationed. But problems still came up. In the New York City area, there was a temporary gasoline shortage at Christmas 1942. For three days, the federal Office of Price Administration banned all gas sales in the area, save to those who were doing the most essential war work. Holiday travel became even more difficult.
By then, coffee rationing was in full effect. Most were limited to around one cup of coffee a day. It went into full effect just in time for Christmas.
Wives, separated from their husbands by the war, felt their loss especially at holiday time. “Last Christmas I worried if my husband would come home from the office sober enough to trim the tree,” a Navy wife told a reporter. “This year I wonder if he’ll come home from the Solomons—anytime.”
It could be difficult to find all the Christmas decorations and trinkets you needed, too. “We have Christmas trees for all the wards,” wrote a nurse working in a military hospital stateside to her boyfriend overseas in December 1942. “I don’t know where they will get decorations for them tho.”
But again, as always, the Christmas spirit shone through, and people found their special holiday moments, and took them, wherever they could find them. Sometimes, soldiers could do things for their loved ones back home. One woman, who endured the war as a young teenager living in Long Beach, California, remembered the act of kindness of a close friend of the family who was in the military overseas. “One Christmas, he sent us a huge box of Milky Ways,” she recalled.. “So much chocolate when there was no chocolate at all. I sat and cried. It took up the better part of the refrigerator, just like a turkey. We didn’t even want to eat it. Because we knew when it was gone, there wasn’t gonna be any more…It was a big treat just to open the refrigerator and see this chocolate.”
In cities, some people had no car during the war (Detroit suspended automobile manufacturing in early 1942); or, if they had one, they had no gas to put in it. How then could you get your Christmas tree home? A number of plucky families in Gary, Indiana solved the problem. They toted their trees home on city streetcars.
In Glenwood, Illinois, in December 1943, school children in all of the local schools filled no less than 206 stockings full of gifts---candy, fruit, gum, comics, popcorn balls and other goodies. The stockings were taken to the closest military bases around—to Fort Sheridan, or to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. There they would be distributed on Christmas Day to any soldier or sailor who had not yet received a gift from home.
Why? It was Christmas.
