INTERNATIONAL: Christmas

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"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 Führer 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.

Noël 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.

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