Wartime Wednesday:
Blitzmas
By December of 1940, England had been suffering under Hitler’s
Blitzkrieg for months. Yet as the British people proved over and over during
the WWII, they were a resilient population. Time
reported in a December 30 article from that year, that “despite the bombs, life
in the big London air-raid shelters, where over 1,000,000 people regularly
spend the night, had become so standardized that many shelter Christmas parties
were elaborate communal affairs with mass harmony singing, skits and dancing.”
Even the royals exhibited a dark sense of humor about the impact
of the war on the holiday when they sent out their annual Christmas card.
Rather than using the typical family photo, the pair stood in front of the
bombed out section of Buckingham Palace. The Times article referenced above also reported that a new sweet was
making the rounds during the Christmas season. Plum pudding, a long held
traditional dish of the holiday was replaced by Blitzmas pudding, “the same as
the traditional Christmas pudding except that carrots were much used where the
receipt
The Christmas goose was also missing, with Britons settling
for mutton or something referred to as “cheap Empire beef.” (I don’t even want
to think about what that could be!) Homes were decorated with lots of
holly making up for usual mistletoe that could not be imported from France.
Toys with a distinctive wartime flavor were all the rage: dolls in
contamination suits for girls and war equipment for boys. No one wanted to be
accused of being unpatriotic by purchasing peacetime items.
Perhaps the biggest change for the British people was that they
were back to work on Boxing Day (December 26) for the first time since the
holiday’s inception in 1871. But they knew that letting their guard down for
even one day might prove fatal to the cause.
What is your most memorable Christmas?
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