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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.