Merry Christmas! I hope you’re having a memorable one. Of course I’m working. And honestly, some of my most memorable Christmases have been thanks to Xmas duty at the Chicago Sun-Times.
There was the Christmas Eve I spent in the back seat of a Chicago police cruiser — observing, not arrested, shadowing a pair of rookies as they tried to keep the night silent in Englewood. The memory of that night always makes me wish the CPD still trusted its officers enough to let the media watch them in action.
Pulling a story out of the stillness of Christmas Day is always a challenge — one Christmas I made the rounds of Thai and Chinese restaurants, talking to diners — not only Jews, but Muslims too. Though the really memorable moment came afterward; a rabbi phoned me, outraged, because I quoted someone saying that Chinese food on Christmas is “a Jewish tradition.” This, the rabbi fumed, is an insult to Jewish tradition. By the time we were done talking, well, let’s say meetings and apologies were involved.
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Otherwise, Chicago history offers up several noteworthy Christmases. These are from my latest book, “Every Goddamn Day,” which the paper is giving away in a drawing to five readers who subscribe or donate here through Dec. 31 at midnight.
There is 1904, when the city of Chicago was broke and the treasurer went to LaSalle Street and secured personal loans to make the city’s payroll on Christmas Eve. There was the “boisterous crowd” gathered in 1955 in front of the Oak Park home of Dorothy Martin, who had announced the world would end on Christmas while spacemen arrived to usher herself and her followers to heaven. Or 1973, when a 350-pound slab of marble fell off the newly-constructed Standard Oil Building, the overture in an engineering disaster that would end with the entire stone skin of the 82-story tower being replaced, at an expense greater than the original cost of construction.
And my favorite: Christmas,1945. For the three Christmases before that year, 12 million Americans in uniform had dreamed of one thing — to be home, instead of at whatever rocky Pacific atoll, British bomber base, Alaskan radar station or German P.O.W. camp they happened to find themselves.
The trains were utterly full — the Southern Railroad estimated 94% of passengers are service men and women. Six Marines grabbed a cab in San Diego and hired the driver to take them to New York City. Illinois servicemen who borrowed a furniture van in Denver spent Christmas snowbound in Kansas City.
As a major rail hub, Chicago hosted an occupying army of stranded servicemen — over 100,000.
The railroads ran this advertisement in the Chicago Daily News at Christmas, 1945, telling readers they were doing their best. Many civilians, including boxing champ Joe Louis, in Chicago to visit his daughter at Children’s Memorial Hospital, simply gave their tickets to stranded vets.
Chicago Daily News files
Those who can’t go home, call. Bell Telephone reported all of its long-distance operators were on duty, a first. In part, because the pricey calls were being given away — 1,000 wounded vets recovering at Great Lakes Naval Hospital each get a five-minute call home, paid for by the Phone Home Fund, financed by readers of the Chicago Times, a predecessor of this newspaper.
Compounding the chaos, Chicago, like much of the Midwest, was glazed by ice, the worst since records have been kept. A Navy plane carrying nine sailors landed at Municipal Airport (now Midway) but couldn’t take off. Dale Drew and June Kemper, two ticket agents for Consolidated Airlines, saw the Pacific vets moping around the airport in the morning. The agents phoned their mothers, already preparing family Christmas dinners for 11 and eight, respectively. What’s a few more? They divvied up the swabbies, each taking some home, where presents for all nine of them materialized under the trees.
After dinner, everyone gathered at the Drew home, where more friends arrived, the carpets were rolled back, and there is dancing and singing. Before leaving, the nine sailors drew up a resolution: “This has been a wonderful Christmas for us,” it read. “One just like you read about in books or see in the movies. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.” They all signed.
Wherever this holiday find you, whether at home or far from it, either in the embrace of your family or in a cell in jail, remember that we each carry the light of happiness within us. It is our duty — alone, if necessary, aided with the help of others if possible — to make that flame shine as bright as possible. Because tomorrow, Christmas 2024, will be only a memory. I hope it will be a happy one for you and yours.
For the full book sweepstakes rules, go to https://chicago.suntimes.com/every-goddamn-day-sweepstakes.