Christmas, 1947

Trains were crowded, but washroom spittoons were polished like gold again, and porters waved their whisk brooms politely over departing passengers. The country which rushed by outside the windows had an amazing look of vigor and opulence; new automobiles gleamed on highways, new houses stood expensively in muddy yards. At dusk the homing passenger could glimpse the never-ending glimmer of colored Christmas lights in streets, stores and farmhouses. From the air, the U.S. seemed even richer; there was a look of treasure in the jeweled electric glitter of its cities seen by night.

The mails were jammed. Butchers grew arm-weary lifting turkeys, chickens, geese and ducks down from overhead racks. Department-store sales, consummated to the recorded rhythms of White Christmas and The First Noel, broke existing records in most U.S. cities.

Simian Sainta. In Denver, Mrs. Billie Shannon and her nine-year-old monkey, Skippit, entertained 23 less fortunate monkeys from the city zoo. Skippit was dressed like Santa Claus and passed out tiny wheelbarrows and toy washboards to his colleagues. In Kansas, whose citizens may legally consume nothing stronger than 3.2 beer, police poured $25,000 worth of whiskey down a drain. But elsewhere liquor sales--particularly of bonded Bourbon--boomed. An Indianapolis liquor dealer contrived a new kind of window display --a Nativity scene set up in a Haig & Haig carton.

In Kansas City, a grocery clerk named James Robert Browne, who had spent 43 months overseas in World War II, 'said: "This is my third Christmas home and I am still not getting much kick out of it. Don't ask me why." College students, however, betrayed no such introspection. Girls from Southern Methodist University had some new slang: they spoke of all material things as "sussies" and used "sneedy" as a term of disapproval.

As Christmas drew near, the voices of carolers, not all of them blending harmoniously, were raised across the land. Office parties left a backwash of glasses and overflowing ash trays on desks and filing cabinets. In Boston, the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals sent out three wagonloads of oats, carrots and apples for the city's work horses. Sweet but harassed rich girls prepared to make holiday debuts at Atlanta's Piedmont Driving Club, San Francisco's Palace Hotel, Baltimore's Alcazar, and in many another big-city ballroom. Boise, Idaho, a city of 40,000, raised a $700,000 hospital fund.

Strict Tradition. Christmas itself would be celebrated according to a strict tradition. As always, it would have its disappointments. In the backs of their minds, many men & women somehow expected to feel like the jolly characters in wintry Currier & Ives prints, and they never did. But there would be few who would not experience a warmth of heart, or a loneliness, or both, which were not a part of ordinary days.

Like President Truman, who was spending Christmas at the White House for the first time, the average citizen would celebrate the day with his family. There would be the smell of evergreens, the rustle of strewn paper, the sight of opened boxes, and the shrill, high voices of excited children. Christmas would be a day of feasting; a day for eggnog and mulled wine; for roast turkey carved with less than surgical skill, for steaming dressing, thick gravy, vegetables and mince pies.

There would be few Americans who would not hope, when darkness fell, that there could be more such days, everywhere in the world.

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