As usual, at this time of year, our correspondents overseas have been exchanging the season's greetings with us here at home and relating their plans for celebrating Christmas. From his post in poverty-stricken, overcrowded Shanghai, Bureau Chief William Gray cabled:

"Two of the Gray children are collecting clothing, toys and oranges for the Chinese children in the Shanghai Blind School and a nursery for foundlings. My daughter Margrethe, I am told, is going to be the Virgin Mary in the Shanghai American school's Christmas pageant. Still, for all the mellow effort we foreigners in China will make to honor the tinsel and holly tradition within our warm little family groups, I think no Christmas ever seemed to hold less prospect of cheer or promise. It isn't a reporter's Christmas in China this year."

Allowing for different accents and conditions, it was much the same this week with most of TIME Inc.'s 278 members overseas. By & large, their celebrations were tempered by the hardships of the peoples among whom they live and work.

One exception was Latin America. From Buenos Aires, where Christmas is likely to be one of the hottest days of summer, Correspondent William Johnson cabled that he had been listening to his children practicing Christmas carols and "they don't sound quite right in hot weather." He figured on eating the turkey cold and taking a swim after dinner. For the traditional Christmas eggnog, the William Whites, in Rio de Janeiro, are substituting mint juleps. Our Bogota correspondent, Jerry Hannifin, says he is going to spend the day alligator hunting. In Mexico City, Bureau Chief John Stanton had no worries beyond a slight apprehension over the fate of his children's toys (their Mexican playmates won't get theirs until Jan. 6, the Day of the Three Kings).

Austerity was the keynote of the London office's Christmas, and most members planned to spend it quietly. Because of the shortage of foreign exchange mistletoe, usually imported from France, was virtually nonexistent, and commodities, from potatoes to caviar, were also in short supply. Although Bureau Chief John Osborne had managed to acquire "a large tree and a small goose," Correspondent Eric Gibbs's plight was typical. Cabled he: "Whether we eat turkey this Christmas depends on Number 22. If, as seems likely, there aren't enough turkeys to go around, our butcher will pull numbers out of a hat to decide who gets a bird. Pray for 22."

In divided and warring India our New Delhi bureau was having "no (repeat no) Christmas celebration." In Tokyo, TIME Inc.'s staff was forbidden by occupation directives to share food or give American gifts to Japanese. In Moscow, where rationing had ended, John Walker had assembled a Ukrainian doll for his infant daughter, a clockwork tank for his young son and, weather and the news permitting, planned to fly to Stockholm to be with his family. Overshadowing the Cairo bureau's festivities was the fighting in the Holy Land. Bureau Chief Don Burke's family had a Christmas tree and all the trimmings and hoped he would be there to enjoy it, but chances were that he would be covering the news in Palestine on Christmas Day.

In Paris, according to Andre La Guerre, the mood was better. France had just come successfully through a trying time which had tested everyone's nerves, and LaGuerre's staff welcomed the respite afforded by the holidays. For the first time in months they could feel that Europe was beginning to move toward recovery.

This encouraging note was reason enough for hoping that Christmas, 1947, marks a turning point in the world.

Cordially,

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