Dominic Broomfield-McHugh, musicologo che insegna presso l’Università di Sheffield, analizza su The Conversation lo spirito originario delle classiche canzoni natalizie degli anni ’40, che ancora oggi sono il sottofondo musicale del Natale.

Brani come Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas e I’ll Be Home For Christmas hanno catturato lo spirito del tempo di guerra e i sentimenti di tristezza, malinconia e nostalgia per le famiglie lontane, separate a causa del conflitto.

Eighty-two years ago this week (ndr il 7-12-1941) , the bombing of Pearl Harbor drew the US into the second world war. Sixteen million Americans signed up to the armed forces, and many American women responded to the Rosie the Riveter campaign by joining workplaces for the first time. Family life was profoundly changed: there was a sense of displacement, absence and loss.

La musica popolare reagì a tutto questo con canzoni di guerra convenzionali, ma fu la canzone di Natale che bilanciò questi messaggi esprimendo il dolore delle famiglie e cercando di sollevare il morale della nazione portando alla ribalta le difficoltà emotive legate alla guerra.

Irving Berlin added White Christmas to the score of his Bing Crosby movie Holiday Inn in 1942. He’d drafted it a couple of years earlier but now its opening line that evoked snowy holidays “just like the ones I used to know” was the perfect sentiment to tug at the heartstrings of a nation receptive to the idea of a nostalgic past, rather than a fragile present.
A year later, Crosby recorded I’ll Be Home for Christmas, a number by Walter Kent and Kim Gannon that more explicitly addressed the zeitgeist. It’s laid out in the form of a letter from a soldier writing home to his family. The strained optimism of the opening line (“I’ll be home for Christmas”) gives way to a shopping list of seasonal cliches (snow, mistletoe, presents on the tree) before the shattering final line (“if only in my dreams”) that addresses the truth: it was all unlikely to happen.
The sentiment was so on point that the BBC banned the song from broadcast, worrying that it might lower morale.

Nel corso dei decenni successivi, diversi artisti hanno interpretato queste  canzoni adottando stili più gioiosi, mentre alcune versioni del 21° secolo  hanno scelto di tornare a enfatizzare i toni malinconici originali.

Sul fronte europeo, Historic UK ci ricorda come fossero quelle lontane festività:

Today it is hard to imagine, with the conspicuous consumption and commercialisation of a modern Christmas, how families coped during World War Two. Presents were often homemade and as wrapping paper was scarce, gifts were wrapped in brown paper…

…

With rationing, Christmas dinner became a triumph of ingenuity. Ingredients were hoarded weeks and even months in advance. Tea and sugar rations were increased at Christmas which helped families to create a festive meal. Turkey was not on the menu in the war years; if you were lucky you might have goose, lamb or pork. A rabbit or maybe a home-raised chicken was also a popular alternative for the main meal, accompanied by plenty of home-grown vegetables. As dried fruit became more difficult to come by, the Christmas pudding and Christmas cake would be bulked out with breadcrumbs and even grated carrot. As the war progressed, much of the Christmas fare became ‘mock’ ; for example ‘mock’ goose ( a form of potato casserole) and ‘mock’ cream.

L’Imperial War Museum, a proposito di Natale durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale, pubblica alcuni video.

During the Second World War, film cameras captured how people celebrated the festive season on both the home front and the fighting fronts. These seven clips from IWM’s film collection shows both civilians and members of the armed forces – even Santa makes an appearance. Some were purely informational – alerting people to extra Christmas rations for example – while others presented carefully crafted narratives of the war.