Christmas and the Second World War

the long version

Celebration of Christmas in the inter-war years, 1939-1944. The celebration of a happy occasion in the most unhappy of times with reference to both adults and children of western Europe finds prominent exposition in the study together with the economic underpinnings of wartime Christmases. Chapters on the celebration of the festival by civilians in hospitals or in air-raid shelters of London and by the Allied military in various segments of the Western Front or in Africa endow the book with eminent interest as do those dealing with the historicity of the festival and its infrastructural attributes. It contains a concluding chapter on the first Christmas of the peace, i.e.. 1945.