Brittain, Vera, Diary, 24-25 December 1914

00000287.jpg
Description: 
Diary of Vera Brittain

Tabs

Case Study: 
From Youth to Experience: Vera Brittain’s Work for Peace in Two World Wars
Creator: 
Brittain, Vera
Source: 
diary
Date: 
24-25 December 1914
Collection/Fonds: 
Contributer: 
McMaster University Libraries
Rights: 
Vera Brittain estate; McMaster University has a non-exclusive licence to publish this document.

Identifier: 
00000287
Language: 
eng
Type: 
image
Format: 
jpg
Transcript: 

.... This is a very strange Christmas Eve, no waits have been singing, no decorations are up, and we have scarcely received any Christmas cards or presents. In all my experience of excited & tearful nights waiting for Santa Claus, of carol-disturbed slumbers & pleasurable half excited anticipation, this Christmas is unique & I hope it may remain so.
Friday Dec. 25th Christmas Day
It was a queer sort of Christmas and as usual depressing, though in one way it was not quite as hard as it really is because we were not suffered to be so oppressively cheerful as we usually are. It hardly seems Christmas though, with no waits or decorations, no prospective gaieties & hardly any presents. A good many people have decided that they are both too poor & too miserable to remember their friends particularly the rich people who have no one at all in any danger (like the Carrs & the Haighs & the Stoops!) The poorer ones & those who are in anxiety about something or other all have made an effort to do the same as usual. I did get one or two decent things though; Dr Hannah gave me a lovely book just the same though he had plenty of excuse for not doing & Edward gave me two volumes of De Quincey & mother a little powder box with a delicious kind of face powder inside that I am very fond of.
We did all the usual things such as going to church twice & having a large festive looking dinner one which we look at one another & try to think we are gay.