Christmas During The Great Depression Research Paper

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What Was Christmas Like During the Great Depression?

Do you remember getting oranges in your stockings for Christmas? Turns out, there’s history behind that.

A kid during the Great Depression was happy to get a single orange in a Christmas stocking, yes, an orange. Getting an orange was a big deal because oranges weren’t affordable during the rest of the year. But they were in abundance as luck; really harvest time to beat the frost, would have it around Christmas. Other treats in stockings were bananas, nuts and candy.

If the kids were really fortunate there may have been a toy such as a doll; or a toy wagon for the very youngest.

The Christmases of the Depression were nothing like the over commercialized-buy -till –you- drop Christmases of today where kids drown in toys. But you have to wonder, which were really the better Christmases? …show more content…

When the economy collapsed, so did the banks and many factories ended up shutting down. The Middle Class became poor by the calamity and the poor became desperate. To help feed the hungry, soup kitchens and bread lines were started up for the impoverished. Needless to say, practically no one had any real money. So Christmas gifts became gifts of necessity rather than gifts of whimsy.

Most everything that was received as gifts was either homemade or homegrown too. Mothers and grandmothers made dresses and aprons for girls from flour sacks. Boys got socks and maybe gloves; perhaps a really lucky boy got a scarf, one that was hand knitted. In other words, there wasn’t fluff and bling; the gifts were handcrafted for practical purposes.

Decorations for the tree, if the family had one, were handcrafted too. They might be paper ornaments; hand carved wood ornaments and maybe candles

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