The REAL austerity Christmas: How a nation gripped by fear kept calm and carried on three months after outbreak of war in 1939
By Leon Watson
If you think this Christmas is tough, spare a thought for those in 1939 - the year Brits really did have to keep calm and carry on.
War had broken out in September and Britain was about to enter her darkest hour, gripped with fear of the horrors to come.
Would it be wrong to carry on as usual? Or was it a patriotic duty to defy Hitler and make it a happy Christmas?
The situation was confusing. War had been declared on September 3 and at sea, several British ships had been sunk by U-boats, including the Royal Oak, which went down in the Scapa Flow with 833 lives lost.
Festive spirit: A British Army Private holding up a Christmas pudding on a plate on December 23, 1939
In December 1939 the second official evacuation scheme started. These children reading the Nipper annual are part of a group leaving for Devon and Christmas in new surroundings
Preparations were being made on the home front. Families were being split up as 825,000 children were evacuated to strange homes across the country. Soldiers were posted abroad.
The war was alive, but the bombing had not begun and it had not yet reached the public's doorsteps. It meant the public felt somewhat at a loss as to how to celebrate their first wartime festivities.
Frequent blackouts left any attempts to go Christmas shopping in the dark were out of the question. For some, they felt it was the last time they could indulge themselves. For others, it was a time to batten down the hatches.
The London correspondent of the New Yorker magazine wrote in early December: 'This is by a long shot the queerest Christmas anyone remembers.'
The Lady magazine urged its readers not to leave 'the ghost of old Father Christmas moping at the door'.
It advised people to 'cut a bright square out of the winter of our discontent and keep Christmas for the children's sake'.
'Shorn of the waste, the gluttony, the excessive clannishness which began to grow over it during the prosperous generations, Christmas may be merrier than ever in the true sense of the word.'
Soldiers toasting the Christmas puddings at a camp somewhere in southern England
Fish and poultry at butchers in Brompton Road, west London, the shop had an abundance of Christmas produce in 1939
Some British Expeditionary Force soldier managed to return home to Victoria Station for Christmas in 1939, greeted here by relatives
Rationing had not yet been enforced, except for petrol, but the government had announced it would begin in the new year, starting with bacon and butter.
Upmarket shops reported that they were sending out more hampers than usual as wealthy people ordered them for friends hit financially by the war.
But not everyone felt able to be jolly. An editorial in the Guider magazine noted that many people would be 'alone among strangers, separated from our families, anxious about people we love who may be in danger'.
Many newspapers and women's magazines carried advertisements for Sanatogen, described as a 'nerve tonic', with the slogan: 'Win Your War Of Nerves.'
A combination of frequent blackouts, snowy weather affecting most of Britain and a lack of children in the cities because of evacuations left stores struggling to attract Christmas shoppers.
New Yorker correspondent Mollie Panter-Downes reported that: 'The toy fair at Harrods, usually a high spot, is a dismal sight this year.
HOW WOOLWORTHS PREPARED FOR CHRISTMAS SHOPPERS IN 1939
The outbreak of war presented a particular challenge for executives at the Woolworths headquarters in New Bond Street, Mayfair, according to the Woolworths Museum. Many regular suppliers dropped out after switching to produce items to support the war effort.
Shortages started to push prices upwards. The Bureau of Staff Relations ('HR') had problems too, as an increasing number of patriotic employees volunteered for military service, leaving the stores where they worked undermanned or undermanaged.
The Real Estate Department was asked to work with District Managers to prepare detailed instructions of what Store Managers should do in the event of an air raid and the steps that they should take to protect both the customers and the buildings from enemy action.
The space allocated to haberdashery was extended to support the Government's 'make do and mend' campaign. Displays of stick-on soles and heels were also expanded.
They also developed ranges intended to help people pass the time in air raid shelters. New story and picture books for children were commissioned, mostly with wartime themes. There were also jigsaw puzzles and patriotic playing cards.
Displays of tinned food were extended, bolstered by large quantities of basics acquired on the spot market, and new experimental products including canned snook and whale meat at sixpence a tin. Customers were encouraged to put some tins away, though some later suggested that the foul-tasting 'luxuries' should be dropped on the enemy, who would have soon surrendered.
'The toys are there all right, but the children are missing. Only occasional groups wander up to shake hands with Father Christmas, chivied along by anxious parents.'
The now defunct Woolworths, however, did well. The young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were seen doing their Christmas shopping at a Woolworth's store in Scotland.
Some shops tried to entice people with early sales. Aquascutum of Regent Street had begun its sale in early December and was selling a cashmere coat reduced to £10 in shades of 'beaver brown, nigger, navy and grey.'
Fur coats of mink, beaver, and Persian lamb were also selling well.
In the last few days before Christmas the shopping crowds were swelled by men in Army and RAF uniforms who were on leave from France.
With all relatively quiet on the Western Front, many had been allowed home for Christmas.
Marshall and Snelgrove of Oxford Street claimed to have had 'many inquiries for evening dresses and party dresses in which to welcome men back on Christmas leave'. The lingerie department was 'particularly busy'.
Men looking for inexpensive but practical gifts for their sweethearts could buy luminous flower-shaped badges 'which glow in the black-out and prevent bumps from other people' or charm bracelets fitted with identification disks.
Popular presents for the troops included gift boxes containing games, woollens and confectionery.
Many presents for children had a military theme: uniforms of Red Cross nurses, pilots, naval officers and soldiers sold for 5s 11d. Miniature Maginot lines were another popular present at Christmas 1939.
The following Christmas there were practical items such as Bakelite helmets, suits and the 'Take coverlet', a cross between a sleeping bag and an overcoat.
Then there were gas-proof suits in coloured oil silk, which cost £2 and offered protection from mustard gas for 'three quarters of an hour'.
Gramophone records were also sought after, as well as perennial Christmas favourites: chocolate, cigars, cigarettes and perfume.
The usual Christmas entertainments proved as popular as ever.
Having closed theatres, cinema and other venues in September because of the risk of mass casualties in an air raid, the government, belatedly realising that it could boost morale, had hastily reversed the decision.
Cinderella was showing at the London Coliseum, Puss In Boots at the Newcastle Empire and, at the Leeds Empire, George Formby starred in Dick Whittington.
Even Father Christmas followed the war time safety precautions as he arrives this year, complete with tin helmet, at London's famous Brompton Road store, Harrods
Lord Snowdon and his family enjoyed Christmas in 1939, as despite the impending war
The then Queen Elizabeth and King George VI, Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth II) with her younger sister, Princess Margaret Rose leaving Buckingham Palace by car for a Christmas holiday in the country in 1939
As the Phoney War continued, parents of the children who had been evacuated from towns to the countryside found the idea of Christmas without them to hard to bear, while some evacuees were equally desperate to come home.
'Please God, Make Mum come and take me home for Christmas,' wrote one distraught and ill-treated little boy in his diary.
The government tried to dissuade parents from sending for their children, urging them: 'Keep them happy, keep them safe.'
Woman's Own advised mothers to 'put the happiness of your children before your own this Christmas time' and spare them 'the sorrow of yet another parting'.
However, recognising that most parents would want to see their children, however briefly, special buses were laid on so parents could travel from the cities to rural areas and spend a day or two with their offspring.
Heroic resistance: Finnish troops battle against the Red Army in December 1939
In the event, a large number of evacuees did go home for Christmas and about 50,000 stayed there.
The royals spent Christmas together in the country while Queen Elizabeth was one of those who sent donations to toy funds set up across Britain to distribute treats to evacuees.
Women's voluntary bodies and local schools laid on Christmas parties for the evacuees, complete with crackers, presents and trees (despite restrictions on wood supply there was no shortage of Christmas trees).
For some evacuees, who had been billeted in homes far better off than their own, Christmas 1939 was a pleasant surprise.
Young Shirley Gibson had never had a visit from Father Christmas, or received any toys at all until that Christmas morning when she woke up to feel 'something heavy on my feet at the bottom of the bed and there were all these presents. It was lovely'.
For Muriel Gane, who lived in a farmhouse in Sussex with her family, 'a particular joy' was to watch the faces of their two evacuees John and Helen, seven-year-old twins from the East End of London.
'Their shining eyes were as round as gobstoppers when they saw the table formally laid with sparkling glasses, crisp linen napkins, and red and gold table decorations and crackers.'
In households around Britain, the war briefly seemed a long way away as people danced to songs that would soon become war-time favourites: Run Rabbit, Run; We're Going To Hang Out The Washing On The Siegfried Line; I Like A Nice Cup Of Tea In The Morning; and Kiss Me Goodnight Sergeant Major.
Some invited soldiers from nearby camps to Christmas dinner. However those soldiers who remained in France for Christmas shivered with cold as they ate turkey and plum pudding in log huts. They were forbidden from lighting fires for fear these would give their positions away to the enemy.
In Britain, carol singers willing to brave the frost were ordered to keep their lights pointed downwards so as not to break the blackout. Church services were held as normal, but bells were not rung in case they were taken as an air-raid warning.
At 3pm on Christmas Day, King George VI broadcast his Christmas message from Sandringham on the BBC.
'A New Year is at hand,' he said. 'We cannot tell what it will bring. If it brings peace, how thankful we shall all be. If it brings us continued struggle, we shall remain undaunted.'
The broadcast was deemed so successful and uplifting that it became an annual event.
Far away on Christmas day the hostilities did not stop. Russian planes bombed Helsinki's suburbs.
Closer to home in the Bristol Channel, the steamship the SS Stanholme hit a mine, laid by a U-boat, just before dinner on Christmas Day and 13 men died.
KING GEORGE VI'S CHRISTMAS MESSAGE IN 1939
King George VI pins a Distinguished Service Medal on Chief Petty Officer C.L.Baldwin in December 1939
The festival which we all know as Christmas is, above all, the festival of peace and of the home. Among all free peoples the love of peace is profound, for this alone gives security to the home. But true peace is in the hearts of men, and it is the tragedy of this time that there are powerful countries whose whole direction and policy are based on aggression and the suppression of all that we hold dear for mankind.
It is this that has stirred our peoples and given them a unity unknown in any previous way. We feel in our hearts that we are fighting against wickedness, and this conviction will give us strength from day to day to persevere until victory is assured.
At home we are, as it were, taking the strain for what may lie ahead of us, resolved and confident. We look with pride and thankfulness on the never-failing courage and devotion of the Royal Navy, upon which throughout the last four months has burst the storm of ruthless and unceasing war.
And when I speak of our Navy today I mean all the men of our Empire who go down to the sea in ships, the Mercantile Marine, the minesweepers, the trawlers, and drifters, from the senior officers to the last boy who has joined up. To everyone in this great Fleet I send a message of gratitude and greeting from myself as from all my peoples.
The same message I send to the gallant Air Force, which, in co-operation with the Navy is our sure shield of defence. They are daily adding laurels to those that their fathers won.
I would send a special word of greeting to the armies of the Empire, to those who have come from afar, and in particular to the British Expeditionary Force. Their tasks is hard.
They are waiting, and waiting is a trial of nerve and discipline. But I know that when the moment comes for action they will prove themselves worthy of the highest traditions of their great Service.
And to all who are preparing themselves to serve their country on sea, on land, or in the air, I send my greeting at this time. The men and women of our far-flung Empire, working in their several vocations with the one same purpose, all are members of the great family of nations which is prepared to sacrifice everything that freedom of spirit may be saved to the world.
Such is the spirit of the Empire, of the great Dominions, of India, of every Colony, large or small. From all alike have come offers of help for which the Mother Country can never be sufficiently grateful. Such unity in aim and in effort has never been seen in the world before.
I believe from my heart that the cause which binds together my peoples and our gallant and faithful Allies is the cause of Christian civilisation. On no other basis can a true civilisation be built. Let us remember this through the dark times ahead of us and when we are making the peace for which all men pray.
A new year is at hand. We cannot tell which it will bring. If it brings peace how thankful we shall all be. If it brings continued struggle, we shall remain undaunted.
In the meantime, I feel that we may all find a message of encouragement in the lines which, in my closing words, I would like to say to you.
I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year. 'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown. ' And he replied. 'Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.'
May that Almighty hand guide and uphold us all.
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