The home front housewife faced Christmas 1943 determined to bring cheer to her home in a time when people really needed a pick me up. This article in the December 1943 Better Homes and Gardens reminded women that simple things found in their homes could be used to make their homes festive.
Merry Christmas!
I love the holiday advertisements in old magazines. I thought I’d show you one of my favorites. I like the idea of a housewife pouring over these ads while making her shopping list. I can imagine her children pointing at the toys and dreaming about what gifts would be under the tree on Christmas morning. The local Firestone dealer or store had a wide variety of gifts, and I’m sure on Christmas Eve the stores were full of last minute shoppers. Enjoy the details in this ad. I think it’s a wonderful glimpse into Christmas past.
Happy Holidays!
What would the home front housewife listen to during the holidays? Here’s a list of Christmas songs and links to recordings so you can make your own 1940s playlist. Enjoy!
“White Christmas” was first heard on Bing Crosby’s NBC radio show on Christmas Day, 1941. He recorded it for his 1942 movie “Holiday Inn” with the Ken Darby Singers and John Scott Trotter and his Orchestra. The song has been wildly successful, and Crosby’s version is the world’s best selling single. It’s definitely one of my favorites and I’ve included that 1942 recording for you here.
Bing Crosby also had a top ten hit with “I’ll Be Home For Christmas”. He recorded this original version in 1943, again with John Scott Trotter and his Orchestra. The song was written for soldiers who were overseas for the holidays.
Here’s a fun record from 1943. The Andrews Sisters join Bing Crosby for two favorites. “Jingle Bells” was on side A and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” was on side B. If you are curious, “Jingle Bells“ was written in 1857 and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” was written in 1934. The link will take you to a page that includes both songs.
Irving Berlin had another hit with his 1937 “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm”. It’s been a popular song ever since it debuted in the movie “On the Avenue” with Dick Powell and Alice Faye. I’ve included that recording here.
Written in 1934, “Winter Wonderland” is another favorite that the home front housewife would have enjoyed. Technically not a Christmas song, it’s commonly played during the holiday season. This version features Ambrose and His Orchestra in 1935.
Written in July 1945, this one barely makes it into our war years time period. I’ve included it here even though the war was over before the holiday season began that year. The first person to record it was Vaughn Monroe, and I’ve included that version here.
This is another that barely makes it into our time period. It was written by Robert Wells and Mel Torme in 1945, but it wasn’t until June 1946 that Nat King Cole and The King Cole Trio recorded the song. That first recording is the one I’ve added here.
This song was written in 1943 and sang by Judy Garland in 1944’s “Meet Me in St. Louis”. The lyrics were changed just slightly in the late 1950s. See if you can hear the difference. This is Frank Sinatra’s 1947 recording.
I’m cheating a bit by adding these songs, but these were written and/or recorded in the late 1940s and nicely round out our list.
Gene Autry was the first to record this song in 1947.
Gene Autry had a Christmas hit again in 1949.
I enjoyed seeing the holiday menus served in each branch of the armed forces in December 1942. This is an Armour and Company advertisement in Good Housekeeping. Note that the home front housewife could send for a booklet explaining why the US troops were the best fed in the world. I wonder how many housewives sent for it. I’d love to see what was in it.
The government’s “Share the Meat” program is mentioned in the ad. This 1942 program was meant to encourage Americans to limit their meat consumption before meat rationing took effect in early 1943.
Monday I posted a menu that included a recipe for Cheese Appetizers. It looked interesting, and unlike any of the other recipes I’ve seen from the war years, so I thought I’d test it. It was in the December 1942 Better Homes and Gardens.
My initial plan for this post was to find other snack mix recipes and include them, but I couldn’t find any. I know that modern party mix recipes were not published until the early 1950s, but I had assumed I could find something similar. Do you know of a snack mix that was commonly eaten in the first half of the 1940s? Let me know if you do, and I’ll add it here.
Melt butter. Add Worcestershire sauce, salt, cayenne, and cereal. Sprinkle mixture with cheese and toss gently until cereal is coated.
I used Wheat Chex and grated Parmesan cheese. With the ingredients measured as listed above, the mixture tastes like salty Parmesan cheese. If you like Parmesan cheese, this isn’t a bad thing, but it definitely needs something else to work as an appetizer today.
First, I would cut the amount of salt in half. I’d add more cayenne because a dash doesn’t offer much flavor in this recipe. I added more Worcestershire sauce and it helped a bit, but this mixture could use some outside help. I’d add things like pretzels and breadsticks for variety.
I think these cheese appetizers would be great as croutons in a salad. You could crush them and use them for breading in a chicken dish. If you like crackers in your tomato or potato soup, tossing a few of these in your bowl would add nice flavor and texture. I think I am going to use the remaining mix I have to make a movie night party mix.
Let me know if your family has a snack mix recipe that’s been passed down. Is it similar to this one, or more like the mix we think of today when eating a snack mix? Can you think of other uses for this recipe? How would you serve it?
I wanted to start off December with a different kind of First Monday Menu. I’ve been researching different holiday menus, and I thought I’d add a few here so you can see what a Christmas dinner in the early 1940s might have looked like.
Holiday meals at the beginning of the decade would have looked much different than a dinner served during the rationing years. The menus I have chosen to feature here are from 1940 and 1942.
This first two are from the January 1940 Your Gas Range Cook Book. It’s a 135 page softcover book that was distributed by the Wyandotte County Gas Company of Kansas. The back pages include a note from the company’s Home Service Department encouraging homemakers to look into CP (Certified Performance) gas ranges. I’ve included the two page spread of both menus so you can see some of the recipes.
The next menus are from The American Woman’s Cook Book, edited by Ruth Berolzheimer. I have the 1940 edition. The menu items are listed in the order the cookbook listed them.
Menu 1:
Menu 2:
The December 1942 issue of “Better Homes and Gardens” has seven menus! I’ll list one of them here, but I hope to try out one or two of them before the month is over. Each menu lists a main dish, vegetables, a salad and/or accompaniment, a dessert, and something else that would be nice to add to the meal. I found these menus to be more housewife friendly.
Menu:
The notes for this menu calls it a dinner in the English Tradition. They suggest starting things off by adding whole cloves and allspice to the 8-vegetable cocktail, heating it up, then straining it into a crystal cup and topping it with a lemon pierced with cloves. The magazine also says to top the broccoli with tiny pimento stars. Those cranberry stars on the pineapple? There’s a note about having cream cheese mixed with lemon juice added to stars cut from canned cranberries.
Here’s the recipe for those cheese appetizers.
Melt butter. Add Worcestershire sauce, salt, cayenne, and cereal. Sprinkle with cheese. Toss gently until cereal is cheese coated.
I think it’s interesting that plum pudding was listed in each book or magazine. Do you eat plum pudding for Christmas dinner? It feels so old fashioned to me, and I wonder when we stopped seeing plum pudding as a Christmas dinner staple. I’m tempted to add one to my table this year.
Are any of the rest of the foods here on your must-cook holiday dinner list?
My soon to be 18 year old daughter volunteered to help me make a dessert from the January 1940 Your Gas Range Cook Book. We chose this recipe because we were hungry for brownies and thought the ingredients were interesting.
Cream the fat and add the sugar gradually. Add the honey and mix thoroughly. Beat the eggs and add to the creamed mixture. Add melted and slightly cooled chocolate. Mix well. Sift flour before measuring and then sift the flour, soda, and salt together. Add the sifted ingredients and nuts to the first mixture. Pour into a greased 9×9 inch square pan. Bake at 300°F for 55 minutes. Makes 3 dozen 1 1/2 inch squares.
The brownies tasted more like honey than chocolate. Our first reaction was that they were rather plain and tasteless, but the more we nibbled on them the more addictive they became. The pan was empty within the hour. They were slightly chewy and cake-like. The honey was definately the strongest flavor. These weren’t very chocolatey at all. I will note that we left the nuts out of our batch because we prefer brownies without them.
These were quick to make and surprisingly tasty, but don’t make this recipe if you are craving chocolatey brownies. You might be disappointed, but you also just might find yourself enjoying them anyway like we did.
Have a wonderful week.
