Christmas in the 1940s: Light in a Time of Darkness
- Craig Johnson
- Dec 2
- 3 min read
I was a very young boy growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, during the war years, 1939 through 1944. The world beyond our quiet neighborhood seemed uncertain and frightening. Each week, the radio brought grim reports from overseas. Ration stamps were carefully tucked in kitchen drawers. And at night, sometimes the lights in our house were dimmed for air raid drills. I remember taking bacon grease to the butcher shop and riding the bus with my mother to return empty tin cans to the downtown collection pile for the war effort. It was my fun job to stomp and flatten the empty tin cans.
Our neighbor, Mr. Huizenga, was the block’s air raid warden. He wore a big white helmet and carried a very impressive extra-large flashlight. Our home kept a bucket of sand on the porch, just in case. As a little kid, I didn’t understand the danger, but we knew that the grown-ups were trying to keep us safe.
Yet even in those anxious years, Christmas was still Christmas. Somehow, the joy of the season managed to shine through the blackouts and the headlines. I can still picture our small living room with frost on the windows, the smell of pine from a freshly cut tree, and carols crackling from the radio. Gifts were simple back then: a new cap gun, a book, Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, an orange in the stocking. But we were grateful. And more than anything, we were together.
Looking back now, I realize how much faith anchored our families during those years. The war made everyone think more seriously about life and death, about heaven and home. Churches were full those Decembers, and the Christmas story seemed more alive than ever. Especially in our Congregational Church with Revered Potts is where my mother and I worshiped occasionally.
When the choir sang, “O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie,” they weren’t just singing about a faraway place. They were praying for peace on earth and goodwill toward men, something they longed to see with their own eyes.
Too young to remember, I have wondered what the sermons were like. I would like to think that the Christmas message our little church shared reminded us that Christ was born into a world at war too. Not a world war, perhaps, but a world torn by sin, fear, and oppression. Bethlehem was under Roman rule. The people were weary of taxes, of soldiers, of uncertainty. Yet into that darkness came light, a light no empire could extinguish. “The light shines in the darkness,” John’s Gospel says, “and the darkness has not overcome it.”
As a child, I wouldn’t have grasped the depth of those words. But I knew that even when the news was bad and the lights were dim, something wonderful was happening every Christmas Eve. The Christ Child was still being born in our hearts.
Now, more than eighty plus years later, I find myself thinking often of those wartime Christmases. The world is still troubled in many ways. Fear and division haven’t gone away. But the same Savior who brought hope to Bethlehem, and comfort to families in the 1940s, still brings peace to us today.
Maybe that’s the message we most need to remember this Christmas: that the joy of Christ does not depend on the times in which we live. It doesn’t depend on abundance or comfort or calmness. It is a joy that enters our weary world quietly, like candlelight through a frosted window.
In those years, when rationing made sugar scarce, my mother would bake a small batch of cookies and remind us, “It’s not what we have, it’s who we have.” And she was right. Christ Himself is the greatest gift.
So, when I hear “Silent Night” playing softly in our candle-lit church each Christmas Eve, I think back to Grand Rapids, to that old air raid warden’s helmet glinting in the porch light, and to the childlike faith that Christmas could still be bright, even in dark times.
Because it was then, as it is now: “The light of Christ still shines, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Lords Peace and a very Merry Christmas,
Craig
