To many Wacoans, Christmas 1940 was a time of hope. Americans had struggled through more than a decade of the Great Depression and its hard times, and now business leaders were sounding quite optimistic.

The average income of American workers had gone up, and economists were predicting almost 6 million men would find new jobs during the next 18 months. In addition, American industries had just received $12.5 billion worth of orders to produce war and defense-related materials, with Congress ready to spend even more in 1941.

This newfound prosperity had made its way to Waco, and was expected to show itself at Christmas. As the Waco News-Tribune announced in an editorial around Thanksgiving, “Let the children rejoice this year, for Santa Claus will heft the biggest Christmas pack that America has seen in a decade.”

But new fears had arrived. Battles against the invading armies of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were being fought in other countries half a world away. Waco residents could not escape the dark specter of a widening world war as Christmas 1940 drew nearer. A few days before Thanksgiving, McLennan County’s first draftees –– 22 young men –– left Waco to begin a year’s service in the U.S. Army. Each day, the local papers seemed to bring news of yet another nation being pulled into war.

By December, newspaper accounts were describing the Nazis’ third straight month of bombing of London and other British cities. Wacoans had responded enthusiastically by collecting blankets and knitting sweaters, socks and mittens to send overseas. On Dec. 4, they organized a local chapter of the British War Relief Society and planned a number of special events to raise money to help the embattled Brits. This included a big Christmas dance at the Raleigh Hotel.

A 1940 cartoon warns of Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler trying to hoodwink America.

In a similar spirit, Wacoans of Greek descent, led by campaign chairman Chris Sermas, were busy collecting money across town to provide food, clothing and shelter for displaced citizens of Greece. That country was suffering an invasion by the fascist Italian forces under Benito Mussolini.

In what might have seemed a bit of overreaction to some, Wacoans gathered in early December to listen to and discuss the results of a nationwide town hall broadcast on the topic, “Must America Fight Japan?”

Adults might have spent time worrying about war and conflict. But Waco’s children did not let news from overseas prevent them from noticing the familiar signs around town that Christmas was indeed quickly approaching.

A stroll through downtown Waco in December 1940 would have provided many scenes of Christmas cheer. Colorful store window displays were filled with Yuletide decorations and tantalizing gifts. Strings of cedar and fir were hanging along downtown streets. They had been given temporary new names in honor of the season. Austin Avenue now bore signs proclaiming it “Christmas Lane,” while other major thoroughfares were christened “Toy Avenue” and “Stocking Street.”

Looking down Austin Avenue (or Christmas Lane), children were no doubt delighted to see a 30-foot-tall Santa Claus grinning merrily atop City Hall.

Strings of thousands of blue Christmas lights had been hung downtown by city work crews, but people were disappointed with their feeble glow. The aging bulbs had been repainted so many times to save money that they were almost opaque. An order was placed for 1,200 bright new blue lights to replace the worst offenders.

The official start of Waco’s Christmas season came on Dec. 5, with the annual Christmas parade through downtown. The parade was a revered Waco tradition that had grown to more than a half-mile in length by 1940. It was overseen by grand marshal Phil Shaver Jr. and his three “divisional commanders.”

As thousands packed the sidewalks to watch, a military band opened the parade and then made way for Santa Claus. His sleigh was pulled through the streets by a pair of Shetland ponies. Waco Mayor L.T. Murray presented Saint Nick with the keys to the city.

Joining Santa in the parade were area high school marching bands playing Christmas songs, decorated automobiles and children dressed in holiday costumes. There also were circus clowns and numerous motorized floats, most of them depicting the theme of “Peace on Earth.” The Sanger Avenue School’s entry, which featured a silver Christmas tree surrounded by students dressed in white, won a $25 prize for best float.

Parade-goers heard the piercing sounds of a circus calliope as it rolled through downtown playing Christmas carols. The crowd no doubt cheered at the approach of Snow White and her seven dwarfs, stars of the popular animated Disney movie released just three years earlier. Onlookers were given another dose of Hollywood when marchers wearing “grotesque giant heads” resembling those of movie stars Clark Gable, Mae West and Laurel and Hardy made their way through the streets.

A Goldstein-Migel Christmas advertisement from 1940.

Once they were downtown, Waco families had any number of stores they could visit to buy presents. Children, of course, would want to be taken to the Goldstein-Migel department store, which advertised itself modestly as “The Christmas Store of Central Texas” and “The Store of a Million Gifts.” The real attraction for kids was on the fourth floor, where Santa held court and listened to their requests each day at his home in Toyland.

Increasing prosperity certainly had expanded the selection of toys.

For boys, there were more war toys than ever. One Waco store’s toy inventory included “anti-aircraft guns, army trucks, tanks with guns that spit sparks, diving submarines, all kinds of airplanes and all equipped with the latest model machine gun.” Santa also could bring boys a toy army supply train, complete with a floodlight to search for enemy planes. There also was a miniature U.S. coast defense fort stocked with toy airplanes that shot out of their hangars when you pressed down on a spring.

At Cox’s department store, aspiring young cowboys could be outfitted in a Buck Jones cowboy suit for $4.95. Less expensive costumes included football players, policemen (outfitted with cap gun, holster and blackjack) or Indians (complete with a red-fringed 10-feather headdress).

Girls surely were excited about new dolls introduced for Christmas 1940 that actually could talk. If you bent the doll forward, she said “ma-ma,” while bending the doll backward would make her say “papa.” Reporting on this advance in doll technology, the Waco News-Tribune commented, “If this keeps up, in several more years they’ll be asking for a drink of water in the middle of the night.”

Of course, boys and girls could ask Santa for more traditional gifts. Cogdell’s advertised tricycles and wagons starting at 98 cents and pedal cars starting at $4.95. A top-of-the-line bicycle such as Western Auto’s deluxe Western Flyer cost $25.95. A copy of the popular Monopoly board game –– now 7 years old –– could be had for $2.

Adults also had a lot of gifts to choose from. Husbands could buy their wives a 70-piece silver service for $19.95 at Armstrong Jewelers or a Lane cedar hope chest for $29.75 at R.T. Dennis Furniture. Party dresses cost up to $40 at Goldstein’s, and a mink coat was on sale for $145 at the Canadian Fur Shop.

Wives looking for gifts to please their husbands could spend $29.95 at Sears for a six-tube Silvertone console radio. They could splurge on a massive 11-tube Truetone Supreme radio-phonograph at Western Auto for $99.50. This included $5 worth of Columbia 78 rpm records at no additional cost.

But as Christmas 1940 approached, Wacoans were just as concerned about giving to those less fortunate as they were about getting gifts themselves. A number of local charity drives tried to make sure that no one in the city went without during the holidays.

Appeals went out across town for donations to the Toy Chest, an annual drive begun in the depths of the Depression by the Kiwanis Club. It aimed to provide toys to the more than 4,000 “ragged little boys and girls of Waco.” New toys were welcomed, but most of the toys donated to the drive were used, and some even were broken. No problem –– dedicated volunteers were busy all during December taking worn-out or broken toys and refurbishing and repainting them to make new ones. “We will make one good doll out of two or three broken ones,” said Toy Chest director Bertha Anderson. To help the drive, the Towayum Camp Fire Girls dressed in old clothes and had a “hobo hike,” going door-to-door asking for donations.

Another drive collected money to provide food to needy Waco-area families. The Christmas Dinner Club distributed sacks of food to 1,600 local families in 1940, each sack weighing as much as 60 pounds. The bags were filled with “generous cuts of meat around which Christmas dinners in the homes of Waco underprivileged can be based.” Each person who contributed to the drive –– even those giving only 50 cents –– was thanked with their name and donation listed in the newspaper.

Homeless children were on the hearts of Wacoans at Christmas. Local churches raised $2,300 in special Sunday offerings to benefit orphans at the Methodist Home, while boys and girls at the Waco State Home received gifts from across the state. About 350 young State Home residents were invited into private homes across Texas during Christmas 1940. Gov. W. Lee O’Daniel and his wife encouraged the practice by driving to Waco and taking a preschooler back to Austin with them for the holidays.

In a world not yet filled with televised entertainment, Wacoans in 1940 caught the Christmas spirit by attending events around town. Almost every church and grade school put on a Christmas program of some kind, and many musical groups performed community concerts.

One such event was the annual Christmas cantata titled “Noel,” which in 1940 brought together students from 22 area grade schools, as well as the Waco High School orchestra. The young musicians occupied both the stage and balcony of Waco Hall and performed a long program of Christmas favorites, ending with “Adeste Fidelis.”

For the first time ever, students in Waco’s black grade schools put on a Christmas cantata of their own at New Hope Baptist Church. More than 300 students, including members of the junior high and high school choirs and the J.A. Kirk Chorus of Moore High School, dressed in beautiful costumes to sing music celebrating the birth of Christ.

Other young people went caroling around town. Singers from Waco High School, First Presbyterian Church and other organizations brought Christmas cheer to the sick and shut-ins.

Musical groups from Baylor also provided Christmas programs. A performance of Handel’s “Messiah” in Waco Hall by the A Cappella Choir was broadcast live by WBAP radio in Fort Worth.

One song that caught the ears of Baylor students during the holiday had nothing to do with Christmas. After hundreds of students had petitioned him to do so, popular bandleader Fred Waring agreed to compose a new Baylor fight song.

As Baylor students began their Christmas holidays on Dec. 20, they were thrilled to hear Waring debut the song that evening on his national radio program. Despite initial enthusiasm from fans, Waring’s fight song, which contained lyrics such as “Golden Bears are higher rate / Because they never hibernate,” eventually fell out of favor. It was replaced with the song used today.

Some Christmas stories went unnoticed by all but a few, but were noted in the Waco newspaper. A Baylor student, desperate for money to buy his girlfriend a present, walked from Waco to Marlin one night in near-freezing temperatures to win a $10 bet. A Waco policeman on Christmas Eve decided to give a pleading woman an early present by dropping public intoxication charges against her husband. The man was released from jail so he could return home with his family. Another Waco policeman, walking his beat downtown on Christmas Eve, was surprised by a grateful merchant who presented him with a free turkey.

As Wacoans awoke on Christmas morning to begin their celebrations, some opened their copy of the Waco News-Tribune and read a special editorial reflecting on the day.

“Our own land is still at peace; here we can still strive for increasing grace and good will, for tolerance and understanding and love,” the editorial said. “As long as men turn even for a day to Christmas and its promise, the world need not abandon hope that it will turn again to good will and peace.”

They were fine words indeed, but no one reading them could know that such hopes would soon be dashed. By the next Christmas, Waco –– and the nation –– would be at war.

When he isn’t researching Waco history or trying to learn to play the ukulele, former broadcast journalist Randy Fiedler works as a communications specialist with Baylor marketing and communications. He can be reached at fied103@yahoo.com.

A patriotic cartoon from 1940 offers Christmas wishes.