Christmas

"The Christmas celebration in Germanic lands is not an invention of the Christian Church but of our forefathers. The day of the Winter Solstice was holy to our ancestors and the period around the Winter Solstice was filled with the fairyland magic of the Nordic soul. In this period gifts were exchanged without an indecent hind-thought of getting a reward from Heaven in return. The Nordic man did not think of a reward for decent deeds. For us therefore, even the Christian Christmas remains a festival of Germanic love, Germanic ways and Germanic benevolence.--Governor Wilhelm Kube of Brandenburg Province."

Excepting Godless zealots in the Soviet Union, the Nazis were unique in Europe last week in their redoubled efforts to deChristianize Christmas. P'arty organizations announced they would ignore Dec. 25, observe instead the solstice on the 22nd.

The Army and Big Business have tried to get the Fuehrer to move Christmas this year to Sunday, Dec. 24, so that munitions production would hum as usual on Monday, the 25th. Adolf Hitler is an extremely backslidden Roman Catholic, but no fool. He declined to take this advice. Aides said he might celebrate Christmas on the 25th at the Westwall with the troops. Last week rustic Nazi pagan neighbors of the Fuhrer at Berchtesgaden announced that on Christmas Eve they will gather on the mountain crags above his snuggery "to shoot guns and pistols to frighten away the spirits of darkness."

This year most Germans are not sending Christmas cards because Minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels has requested that money which would be used on such cards be contributed to Nazi Winter Relief. To enable housewives to spice the traditional German Christmas puddings, cakes and cookies, the State last week released ginger, aniseed, vanilla and cinnamon for sale for the first time since World War II broke. Still withheld from Hausfrauen at any price are pepper, caraway, paprika. Nazi authorities urged the making of "eggless and butterless cookies."

All papers in the Reich featured the Fuhrer's decision that, as a special Christmas dispensation, each German man may buy one necktie, each woman one pair of stockings, without the usual deduction from his or her annual clothing ration of "100 points"--ordinarily a necktie exhausts three points, a pair of stockings six points. Knitting yarn and even thread are so drastically rationed in the Reich that few German women can make clothes for their relatives as Christmas presents. Toy stores were practically sold out weeks ago, and last week in Berlin's famed Wertheim's not a single new soldier or cannon was available and clerks were having to sell old-fashioned hobbyhorses.

In sweet shops, which in Germany at this time of year usually bulge with sugared dainties of all sorts, many a counter is piled with small gnarled apples.

Noel et L'Amour. In comparison to Germany last week pre-Christmas France was paradise. Oysters, caviar, foie gras, turkey, geese or chicken, wines and liquor were all abundant and Premier Edouard

Daladier has kept food prices from rising.

French adults celebrate not Christmas Day, which is for children, but Christmas Eve, which climaxes solemnly at midnight Mass, followed by a merry feast in the small hours. Last week, as a special dispensation, the State, which has forbidden midnight Masses since the war broke, authorized them for Christmas Eve. In Paris, priests were required to limit attendance in their churches to the capacity of available air-raid shelters nearby.

French department stores reported Christmas sales about 40% below last year. They were doing a thriving trade, however, in everything wearable, drinkable or eatable that devoted French women thought their men at the front might like. L'Amour is important to morale, and the State made it possible last week for tens of thousands of women to visit their husbands at Christmas. Mothers with evacuated children in the countryside were offered by the French State Railways free trips during the holidays to visit their moppets.

U. S. residents of France were thoroughly vexed when the Embassy, in the holiday absence of genial Ambassador Bill Bullitt, began a drive to obtain their fingerprints and urge as many of them as possible out of the country.

"Rummiest War." In the United King dom authorities made frantic efforts to keep evacuated children from returning to town for Christmas, and literary bigwigs wrote persuasively in the press. "This Christmas, coming as it does in the rummiest war the world has ever known, will be a test of our common sense," wrote Novelist J. B. Priestly. "We are fighting bewildered, angry, hysterical men, who at any moment may bark out orders to rain death and destruction on this country. . . . Therefore, let the children stay [in the country]. . . . It is better to spend one Christmas Eve longing for them than to spend a thousand evenings of dreadful remorse."

Efficient social workers among the evacuated moppets meanwhile hastily scrambled into rehearsal thousands of Christmas plays. Their strategy: "Once a child gets a part in a play he will refuse to go home for Christmas." From Canada arrived seven tons of Christmas presents for the British evacues. Up in Scotland the heir presumptive to the throne, Princess Elizabeth, received a dollar bill from "an American child named Elizabeth" who wanted to help evacues, promptly sent it along by post. Her Royal Highness and Little Sister Princess Margaret Rose Christmas-shopped eagerly in "a sixpenny store somewhere in Scotland."

In the big London stores officials gloomed, "trade is far below normal." The forehanded British toy trade offered numerous war toys, in sharp contrast to shortage in Germany, some remarkably expensive. Example: the Maginot Line, completely equipped, ten pounds.

U. S. dolls completely swept the German product from British doll marts, and clerks were enthusiastic. They banged the heads of the dolls against their counters, chirped at customers: "Just see--these American dolls are unbreakable!"

Wealthy Britons seemed to be splurging last week on Christmas furs and jewels, "partly as investments," shopkeepers thought.

Plenty of old-fashioned British Christmas cards were posted, but World War II set many of the King's subjects to addressing cards which were chiefly or entirely about winning the war, with "Merry Christmas" omitted altogether. Typical was a card on which a beefy British bulldog bestrides the Union Jack with the greeting: "Strong and yet kind, whilst children near him play, but foes who touch the flag will rue the day!"

Saint Nicholas & Black Peter. Slow in some respects, the Dutch had outspeeded other Europeans in the matter of Santa Claus last week, as they do every year. To strict Calvinistic subjects of devout Queen Wilhelmina it would smack of blasphemy to observe Dec. 25 otherwise than with solemn thanks in church for the birth of their Savior. They figure, however, that Santa Claus, or St. Nicholas, the patron saint of Generosity, was born on Dec. 6, do their giving then. Dutchmen conceive the Saint as a bishop whose ecclesiastic dignity is above lugging presents around in a sack. This is done by his far from humble minion, Black Peter, a capering minstrel in braided doublet, van Dyck ruff and Renaissance plumed hat.

Many Dutch villages have their St. Nicholases and Black Peters, generally two popular local characters who know all the children. By prearrangement with parents, they leave toys for good children or threaten to leave a birch switch for bad as they go from house to house. Especially naughty moppets are supposed to be terrified into good behavior when grimacing Black Peter threatens: "Unless you mend your ways, I'll carry you off in my bag to Spain!" According to one legend, Blackamoor Peter came from one of the ancient lands of the Moors.

This year Netherlands troops guarding the frontier with Germany were visited on St. Nicholas Day by the mitered Saint, bearing aloft his bishop's crook and preceded by capering Peter, who brought sugar cakes for the soldiers. Dutch cameramen snapped St. Nicholas peering through field glasses at cruising bombers outlined against the sky. Amid jollification, Saint and minion tasted the troops' pea soup, which gulping Peter pronounced "prachtig" ("swell").

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