"Blitzmas"

Intimates of Their Majesties last week received cards on which the King and Queen were seen standing in front of the bombed portion of Buckingham Palace. This type of greeting a good many Britons cheerfully called a "Blitzmas Card." Sold in the shops like hot cakes were many reading "Wishing You Anything But A Jerry Christmas!" Other humorists sent imitation ration cards, but most Britons sent the traditional type of Christmas card, as did Queen Mary, who chose again a rustic flower garden and quaint cottage. But this year Her Majesty's greeting read, "There'll always be an England."

Talented refugees did their best to help their British hosts with holiday entertainments. In the crypt-shelter of one London church a nativity play, The Christmas Story, was scheduled to be performed by a German-refugee cast wholly composed of non-Aryans who are Christians. Traditional British carol singing, usually done by amateur groups who stroll from door to door, take up a collection which they donate to charity, and are invited in for drinks, was abandoned this year because of the black-out and night bombing. Officials did all they could to see that Christmas celebrations took place indoors.

Blitzmas pudding, as widely dished up in the United Kingdom last week, was the same as the traditional Christmas (or plum) pudding except that carrots were much used where the receipt called for certain fruit. There was no Blitzmas shortage of nourishing food but instead of "Christmas goose," turkey or other high-priced fowl* most people, including the armed forces, chomped cheap Empire beef or mutton on Dec. 25. Officers of about the rank of colonel, if at all prosperous themselves, generally treated their men to free beer.

Holly grows widely in Britain, so plenty of that was hung up last week, but there was none of the usual mistletoe from France, and bussing went on without it. One daring London shop did a good business selling white satin nighties with green mistletoe appliqued. British moppets openly scorned peacetime toys as "sissy" and responsive British parents bought plenty of dolls togged in gas decontamination suits for little girls, plenty of toy war equipment for lads.

For the first time in Britain, all heavy industry and many offices and stores prepared to work full time on Boxing Day (Dec. 26). Last year many British workers got a two-or three-week Christmas holiday amid the now-forgotten "phony war." Meanwhile, life in the big London air-raid shelters, where over 1,000,000 people regularly spend the night, had become so standardized that many shelter Christmas parties were elaborate communal affairs with mass harmony singing, skits and dancing. Christmas trees sold regularly at 40-c- per foot and every big shelter had one, that under Piccadilly Circus sprouting a neon sign "HAPPY CHRISTMAS." In most shelters a costumed Santa made his rounds with small gifts, but festoons and tinsel had to be given up in subway-platform shelters because the air blast from the trains blew the flimsy stuff away.

De luxe London hotels offered Christmas goose and turkey dinners, and a quartet of carol singers in Dickens costumes were hired to wander from one smart London restaurant to another, taking up charity collections for the blind. As usual, London theatres staged the "Christmas Pantomimes" they have revived over & over for generations. In that hoary favorite Aladdin And His Wonderful Lamp last week a few blitz jokes were gently inserted -- such as changing the line "Clear the way, clear the way!" into "All clear, all clear!" This year, more than ever, adult Britons went with their moppets to these children's entertainments, seemed to evoke Christmas memories of better, bygone times.

The British Royal Family, who always observe Christmas with great simplicity -- the royal Princesses have never had a Christmas tree and did not have one last week--rusticated quietly at a place kept rigidly secret lest Nazi airmen bomb George VI while the King was reading his scheduled Christmas broadcast. This year British Broadcasting Corp. titled its annual program Christmas Under Fire, scheduled Welsh workers singing in a factory, an Army choir in the Holy Land and a broadcast from an R. A. F. patrol plane over the Channel--especially topical because many Britons last week were saying "It would be just like that bloody Hitler to try his invasion on Christmas."* From amid the rubble and ruin of Coventry a broadcast was planned of Holy Communion in the 600-year-old crypt of the chapel of smashed Coventry Cathedral.

* Turkey was 57-c-per pound in Britain, goose 40-c-.

* The Fuehrer's personal Christmas card last week proved to be a fancy job featuring a photograph of the famed Winged Victory of Samothrace, which German troops took from the Louvre in Paris. It now stands in the Berlin office of Adolf Hitler and on the Dictator's greeting card is shown with a flight of German bombers and fighter aircraft. Instead of ''Merry Christmas" the card reads "Our Winged Victory," Recipients: Il Duce, El Caudillo, Rumania's Antonescu, etc.

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