Christmas 1918

I want to note, right from the onset, that I don't want to have this blog be one of those websites that attempts to relate every Christmas to the historical event or events that the blog focuses on, although given the focus of this blog on the period generally from the late 19th Century up until around 1920, more or less, that would be more tolerable and even interesting.  What I mean is, I don't want this to become the "Christmas is about World War One" day, which it isn't.*

Charles Russell's 1918 Christmas Card, Christmas Meat.  The "meat" is a play on words.  This 1918 card (which I found on the net, and which is past any copyright protectection, whohc is why I put it up) does not depict a scene from the Frontier West like some might suspect, but depicts a contemporary scene from 1918 in which one cowboy is bringing a deer, i.e, meat, to an old cowboy at a line camp who was probably living by that time of the year on canned beans for the most part.  Isolated line camps would remain a feature of Western ranching until after World War Two when the 4x4 truck changed ranching.

Still, as this year finds us winding down some of the stores we started tracing on a century removed daily basis, or on a focused basis as well, this would be a good time to take a look at Christmas, 1918.

Rather obviously, a focus of many people was on their servicemen who remained overseas in France, the war having just ended.  This was the case, for example, for the Wyoming National Guardsmen of the 148th Field Artillery, who were now on occupation duty in Germany.  Lot of troops had already come home, but a bit oddly, perhaps, the troops who were mostly likely to have returned were those who had been stationed in the United Kingdom at the time of the war's end. They were packed up and shipped home nearly immediately, most of them having only recently arrived.  So the oddity of military logic, and perhaps there was some logic to it, is that if you just showed up, you were sent right home.  The same was true for those who never made it overseas.  Many were pretty quickly discharged (into an uncertain economic future).  Combat troops who had been fighting in France went on to Germany. And of course, Germany was in turmoil so that made some sense.

In fact, not only was Germany in turmoil, there was a gun battle in Berlin on December 24 between the "Volksmarine" who were there and the German Army.  The Volksmarine were naval troops (Kreigsmarine), sailors and solders who had gone over to the Reds.  On the 24th, they battled unit s of the Regular German Army.  The Volksmarine held the field at the end of the day and the German Army's performance at street combat proved to be quite poor.  The Army negotiated a withdraw from the city and the Reds returned to their barracks.  The situation defused itself and the German government slowly assumed control of the city.  The Volksmarine, for their part, grew discontented with their lack of pay and ultimately they were called to collect pay in the presence of right wing military authorities some weeks later, who dismissed and discharged them, retaining 10% of those who mustered for pay (30 men) and shot them dead in an application of the old Roman principle of decimation.

With stuff like that going on, you can see why experienced troops were retained.

The military always makes an effort to celebrate major holidays and Christmas is one, perhaps the biggest one. We can be assured, therefore, that in every American military unit there was a type of Christmas feast and can be more assured that in a lot of units, probably most units, officers dined on the 24th and 25th separately and probably as formally as the circumstances would allow.

Christmas Tree in Officers Club, France.

As would be suspected, there wasn't one single expression of Christmas that was the same from unit to unit, for those stationed overseas, but a variety of them.  The American Red Cross, which had been active in the war (as we've discussed earlier) continued to be and made an effort to bring Christmas to the troops.

Red Cross Recreation Hut in France decorated for Christmas.

Not all of those troops were in good condition, of course. Some celebrated Christmas in Europe as convalescents.

Christmas stocking over the best of a convalescing American solder in the United Kingdom.

The Red Cross also remained active in trying to distribute needed items to soldiers.

Red Cross socks being distributed as presents to soldiers.  The American Army,  in spite of the nation really materially mobilizing for the war, had a hard time supply woolen goods of some sorts, including socks, for some reason.  Socks were knitted by volunteers.

While also observing the holidays themselves.

Red Cross nurses in their quarters, decorated for Christmas.

Christmas wasn't a happy one universally in Europe by any means.  Death had impacted everyone and privation had set in everywhere.

Cartoon from the New York Herald, December 25, 1918.

In Europe, where they could, and as we would expect that they would, Americans tried to make the Christmas a little more cheery for those who had been impacted by the war.

American military and Red Cross personnel giving Christmas gifts to British orphans in the Untied Kingdom.

In the U.S. things were not bad, in spite of the strain the war had imposed, and people were mostly just waiting for troops to come home. Some would be coming home as badly damaged men, of course, and the families of the missing would find that some wouldn't be coming home at all.  But most would be coming home to their families and old lives (we'll post on that soon).  Therefore, Christmas had a sense of longing. . . 

J. C. Leyendecker's 1918 Saturday Evening Post illustration, which we've already run here.  His 1917 cover had a solder feeding an orphan.

but it also had many of the contemporary features of American holidays, consumerism already being a thing, in spite of what people like to believe.

While the war had brought more than full employment to the United States (indeed, everywhere), and while deaths from the war, whether direct combat losses or ancillary ones, like those lost due to the 1918 Flu Epidemic, created a workplace shortage (grim topic for Christmas I know), there were still those in the country, indeed a lot in the country, who lived hard lives.  Efforts were made to recall them as well.

Christmas for horses and their drivers in Washington D. C.

So our post on Christmas, 1918.  Some things we'd recognize, and some not so much.

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*If I publish a "New Years Resolutions For Other People" post, like I have on some prior years, but not last year, one will be for people to quit converting every holiday into Veteran's Day.  I am a veteran, but frankly it's gotten strangely out of hand since the Depression Era/World War Two generation became aged and the Boomers started to feel guilty about how they'd treated them.  When I was a kid, Veteran's Day was observed but frankly not a great deal.  Memorial Day was used by families to honor and remember their own dead.  Now, Veteran's Day, Memorial Day, Pearl Harbor Day have all become Veteran's Days and I routinely see people posting things to make you feel vaguely guilty if you don't recall Veteran's on whatever particular day it is.