In 1917, America had just entered the war in Europe and the writers of a Saturday Chronicle article declared that the gifts Connecticut boys on the front lines in France were receiving were a darn sight better than what they experienced as young soldiers in the Civil War. Welcome to This Day In Christmas At The Front History as your time-traveling host Allan Appel and Jason Bischoff-Wurstle of the New Haven Museum take you back.
Click on the file above to play or download.
Growing up in a Congregational church in the 1960's, I recall our minister saying that most church members did not have Christmas trees through the 1940's. Even then, Christmas was viewed by Congregationalists as something celebrated by degenerate Episcopalians and Papists, not God-fearing, (literal and spiritual) descendants of Puritans. :)