A century ago, many Berkeleyeans gathered in local homes, churches and clubs to celebrate the holidays. “Hundreds of local carol singers from the churches” wandered the streets on Christmas Eve, following midnight services in several churches, the Berkeley Daily Gazette reported Dec. 25, 1924.
The paper noted that passersby on the residential streets were “cheered by the many colored lights bedecking trees in the homes. One home observed the old English custom of placing candles in the windows.”
“The wreaths of holly hanging in the windows of almost every Berkeley home seemed to send a message of good cheer…the cold, clear, weather of the evening and day furnished the traditional Christmas weather and curls of smoke from many chimneys showed that the chill was being warded off and that preparations were being made for Santa.”
Local charitable groups and campaigns provided Christmas meals for 422 local families and more that 1,500 “individuals who would otherwise have been forgotten” received Christmas presents. These were primarily local poor children, and several organizations sponsored parties to give out presents and candy.
On Dec. 27, employees of Berkeley’s public works department, including “street sweepers and garbage truck drivers and trench diggers,” were given a banquet at Ennor’s restaurant downtown, sponsored by their department heads.
Weather-wise, it was a cold Christmas. The night of Dec. 25, Berkeley temperatures fell to 30 degrees and the next morning “everything exposed was covered with white frost.”
Holiday accidents: The Dec. 25, 1924 Gazette front page also carried no less than four stories about local traffic accidents in which at least nine people were injured.
Three men were in a car “demolished” by a train in Richmond; a mother and daughter were “run down” by a car which hit a parked car, which then hit them; a family of three was hurt in a two car crash; and a wife thrown from a car and injured when her husband, the driver, swerved to avoid a “speeding auto”. A U.C. student was arrested for drunk driving and causing an accident on Dec. 23, in which his passenger was most likely fatally injured.
Elsewhere around the United States at least 37 people died in fires at hotels and a school, possibly caused by candles on Christmas trees.
Thank you: Since my next column will run in 2025, I want to take my annual end of the year opportunity to remember my two predecessors who began this column. Carl Wilson originated it in the 1980s, then Kenneth Cardwell ably continued it. I inherited it and have now been writing the column for more than two decades and in the course of those years have looked at Berkeley’s past in the late 1910s, most of the 1920s, all of the 1930s, and into World War II.
The column was originally focused on 75 years ago in Berkeley. Some years ago I switched it to 100 years ago. Most of the source material is from the now long defunct Berkeley Daily Gazette, which extensively covered local happenings in that era. Occasionally I use other sources.
I would also like to thank the latest of the Berkeley Voice editors, Nate Jackson, who very professionally handles editing duties, asks astute questions about the content and reliably catches and fixes mistakes (from dates to typos) that I periodically make. With our world now awash in self-made social media, we often forget the real value of having an editor look at written material in advance of publication. Thank you, editors!
Finally, thank you kind readers, many of whom have followed the column for many years.
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.