HOLIDAYS: Christmas: 1941

I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men! This week, 77 years after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote Christmas Bells in an equally troubled time, the chimes still pealed their message. It came from the tall spires of city churches, echoing off the walls of skyscrapers and through long canyons of street. It came from the tiny iron bells of clapboard churches deep in the nation's farmlands, traveling far & fast over brown, barren fields and dead leaves in the woods.

In Boston, when the carolers came on Christmas Eve, the great houses on Beacon Hill would—barring unexpected blackout—be alight from top to bottom, with a candle in every window. There would be shiny holly wreaths tied with red ribbon on the doors, milk-white mistletoe berries over the living-room entrance, clusters of bayberry and bittersweet over the stockings on the mantel. Small children in fuzzy pajamas would be led unwillingly to bed, while teen-age brothers & sisters paraded stiffly in first Tuxedos and long dresses, ready to sweep off to Christmas Eve dances.

In Midwest farm towns, there would be programs at the community churches, with youngsters reciting while mothers prompted from the front pews, or pageants of boys in the turbans and robes of the Three Wise Men and girls with the gauze wings of angels. Midway through the evening a man would slip quietly away from his seat, and at the end a pillow-fat Santa Claus would suddenly appear, lugging a sack of oranges and candy.

In Texas, where poinsettias splashed bright red cheer over gardens, city streets would be hung with colored lights shining like strands of beads against the darkness.

Cowboys and their ladies would dance all night to the scraping of fiddles; Mexican Los Pastores troupes would give their age-old folk pageant.

Everywhere the carolers would walk slowly past lighted candles, singing the old familiar songs, in the thin voices of the young, sometimes off-key. And as Christmas Eve ended, there would come the solemn, beautiful midnight Masses of the Roman Catholic Church.

Then from each black, accursed mouth The cannon thundered in the South, And with the sound The carols drowned Of peace on earth, good-will to men! And in despair I bowed my head; "There is no peace on earth," I said. . . .

As to Longfellow in 1864, many a doubt would come to the U.S. as it celebrated Christmas of 1941. Nevertheless, parents would work late into the night trimming the trees until the branches dripped tinsel, stars, iridescent glass balls, red-cotton Santa Clauses, the old-fashioned popcorn strands. They would pile presents underneath, wrapped in cellophane and tissue paper, tied with ribbons and bows.

In the morning the small fry would come bouncing into bedrooms, shouting Merry Christmas and itching to dive at the filled-up stockings, the boxes under the trees. Soon whole families, in bathrobes and dressing gowns, would be engulfed by billows of wrapping paper, the whir of toy trains, the squeals of genuine or counterfeit surprise.