Darkest Christmas: December 1942 and a World at War

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Light, life, love”: the image of Mary and the Christ Child, known as “the Stalingrad Madonna”, drawn in charcoal on the back of a map by Kurt Reuber in 1942. The book’s appeal, he says, lies in the combination of “classic English Christmas fantasy” – carol singers, food markets with plum puddings, cathedral choirs – with “the long shadows of pagan tradition” that still haunt our midwinter feast.

With Alastair Sim reprising his role as Scrooge, produced by Chuck Jones, and directed by Who Framed Roger Rabbit's animation director, Richard Williams, this half-hour short film runs just long enough to provide its viewers with enough nightmare fuel for the entire Christmas season. American soldiers stationed in India put on a celebration for Polish refugee children, while in the prison camp at Cabanatuan in the Philippines, Japanese guards allowed the prisoners to receive Red Cross food packages. Modern historians may argue that the Allies had effectively already won the war at this stage, but this was far from obvious for the actors standing in the middle of the maelstrom of history. We kept the card and a carbon paper copy (younger readers ask grandad) went to the GP, and we gave a copy to the patient. It seems no matter how much you love in life, death awakens an overwhelming depth of affection which can’t be discovered in life.Although, that’s not what we’re here to talk about and if you haven’t seen it, I don’t want to spoil it too much!

The hours, the work, emotional trauma, years of tory underfunding of the NHS have left me burnt out. The fact this idea had never been synthesized so distinctly before Violent Night is a surprise, but the important thing is that it finally happened. It isn’t about being pain free, overflowing joy, perfect gifts, candlelit feasting, wonderful family time, or charming traditions.Christmas 1942 saw the entire range of man’s conduct towards his fellow man, reflecting the extremes of behavior, good and bad, that World War Two gave rise to. It was nothing like the richly decorated, brightly lit Christmas trees of their childhood, but the memory alone was almost overwhelming to some. It would be another 10 years before the European working time directive would arrive and protect juniors from the worst excesses of their own loyalty to the NHS. KURT REUBER, a 36-year-old priest and physician, was inspired by the overall mood of hopelessness and distress to draw a sketch of the Virgin Mary with the newborn Christ, with brown chalk on the back of a three-by-four-foot Russian map.

Like many people of my generation, I discovered The Box of Delights through the 1984 BBC adaptation; at the age of 10, I found a frisson in its references to pagan folklore, Arthurian legend and medieval philosophy that I had not encountered in more sanitised children’s stories.this fabulous book focuses almost entirely on Christmas 1942 and the range of man's conduct toward fellow man, reflecting the extremes of behavior, good and bad, that WWII gave rise to. Christmas at a time of war is all the more so since young men and women pass the holiday torn from their loved ones, in a situation where they cannot know if they are even to survive until the next Christmas. Nick a child-molesting, arms-profiteering skinhead with manipulation skills that Himmler would envy. A global account of how--as the outcome of World War II still hung in the balance--millions of men and women around the world, torn from their civilian lives, passed the most important holiday of the Christian year.