Matthew Litt

Christmas 1945 was the first peacetime Christmas after four years of WW2, sacrifice and loss, and Americans made the most of it. It was intriguing to learn how preciously this Christmas was regarded and how different. President Truman gave federal employees four days off. Veterans were held in high regard and all efforts were made to bring them home (Operation Magic Carpet), creating national logjams at airports, and bus and train stations. Not all factories had completed the transition to show more peacetime production, thus impacting production of toys such as trains and trucks (although dolls were plentiful). There were shortages of nylons and men's dress shirts, but a plentitude of neckties. Sugar rations were saved up for holiday baking. What never occurred to me was that Christmas in Europe was quite bleak. Those countries suffered greatly during the war and were still dealing with the aftermath of food shortages, poor health and lack of shelter. There is a section on Jewish soldiers and families celebrating a peacetime Hanukkah, and a paragraph on Black veterans' optimism for the future conflicting with white prejudice. A glaring omission is of the Japanese Americans incarcerated by the American government during the war--how did they regard this holiday season?? show less