New York Christmas
By GERARD E. NEYROUD
New York THE tallest Christmas tree in the world has been brought down from the northern forest, and now stands rootless on the concrete of New York's Rockefeller Plaza. Nature has attended to the decorations. Its branches are weighed down with real snow. The snowfall was a fortunate pccurrence and one which, ID is hoped, will be repeatedly renewed throughout the festive season. For Congressional investigators have made the disquieting discovery that the country is being flooded with tree-ornaments from Bohemia, which, of course, is behind the Iron Curtain. This " diabolical conspiracy," to quote the very words of. Senator Wiley of Wisconsin, " turns the stomach of every decent American."
Americans, more overtly Christmas-conscious than any other people, are in the process of being subjected to the most formidable tidal wave of advertising they have ever known. One great department store, which sells everything in the dic- tionary from ant-eggs to zithers, has taken an entire sixty-four- page section of the New York Times to display its wares. Colonel McCormick's Daily News, which does the thinking for two-and-a-half million people, hands over 154 of the 242 pages of a pre-holiday issue to the merchants. Mass-circulation magazines are bloated to four times their normal size, with no corresponding increase in non-commercial reading-matter. Postmen (who prefer to be known as carriers) bend under the weight of pouches stuffed with mail-order catalogues. And from every one of America's hundred million radios and thirty million television sets flows a never-ending cascade of " com- mercials," ranging in intensity from simple wheedling to plain bullying.
The choice of offerings is bewildering. For the ladies there are hand-wrought silver spoons at $16 each, a diamond ring for $12,000 or a diamond-encrusted gold clip priced at $5.95 (50c. down and 50c. a week). There are such unromantic gifts as dish-washing machines, electrically propelled egg- beaters, gadget-Covered kitchen ranges, shiny deep-freeze cabinets. For a mere two dollars there is an inexplicable garment billed as a " history-making calorie-counting glamour apron (count the calories while you eat)."
Offerings for men show less range and far less originality, with neckwear still the prime favourite, though there is cause for satisfaction in that the hundred-dollar hand-painted " four- in-hand " has died a merited death. Today the necktie industry appears to have been taken over lock, stock and barrel by a number of hitherto obscure White Russian countesses, who drop haughty hints that, for a consideration, they might be induced to part with signed and coroneted creations which, while relatively chaste, still are explosive enough to _shatter the remaining glass in the Burlington Arcade. For the inner man and woman there are whole smoked turkeys from Connecticut, the tangy black hams of Virginia's razorback hogs, decorative baskets of oranges and kumquats from the groves of Florida or a gift carton of potatoes from Idaho—fifteen of them for only $4 post paid. There are gift- cards entitling the recipients to the periodic benefits arising from membershi of such institutions as the Cheese of the Month Club, the Fruit of the Month Club and the Surprise of the Month Club.
For the younger set there are pressurized suits for use when visiting other planets, cowboy outfits for home use and atomic- ray space guns for defence. There are Jewish dolls for little Jewish girls. There are nun dolls for the devout. There are dark-complexioned dolls for negro children. There is, for sophisticated moppets, a doll named " La Vie en Rose," who comes " decked in her exquisite low-cut evening gown, a blood red rose on her bouffant skirt and another in her picture hat." For the mothers of tomorrow there is a doll which, in place of internal sawdust, bears a smaller- built-in doll attainable by manipulating a Caesarean zipper.
Placid folk content to spend their evenings gathered around the family radiator are advised that modern science has pro- duced something new and exciting in the field of home enter- tainment—something so new that its invention has not yet been claimed by a Russian. This ingenious contrivance, which enables stay-at-homes to gaze upon the Eiffel Tower in all its three-dimensional glory, is known as the Stereoscope. Its sponsors, who concede that there was fun in the parlour in Grandma's day, claim for the Stereoscope that it is way ahead of television in entertainment- value, with the further inesti- mable advantage of having no commercials.
Everything, of course, is " gift-wrapped." Elaborately ornate wrapping-paper and garlands of festive ribbon are man- datory and profitable extras. Most shops now have gift- wrapping counters staffed by deft gift-wrappers, and there is no escaping their ministrations, be the gift a wrist-watch or a refrigerator. There is mounting evidence, however, that the great annual assault on the American pocket-book is not proving as fruitful as the merchants had hoped. People are holding back. Yet there is no general lack of spending money, and there is even less lack of gainful employment. At the moment the New York Times is printing a daily average of forty-four columns of situations-vacant advertisements, with salaries ranging from $40 a week for office boys to $35,000 a year for top executives.
But " there's no real Christmas spirit in the air" is the lament of one big shopkeeper. His may be the narrow view- point of the overstocked retailer, but it is none the less true in the deeper sense. It seems reasonable to conclude that the Spirit of Christmas, which means so much to Americans, is being inhibited this year by the perplexities lurking behind the tree. America faces the new year and the new government with considerable trepidation. The Democrats—with the pos- sible single exception of Mr. Adlai Stevenson—are unhappy at the prospect of four years in the wilderness. The Republi- cans have real cause for apprehension over the chasm that has opened between Senator Robert Taft and the President- Elect. The rift was not unexpected, but it materialised with greater suddenness" and went far deeper than had been antici- pated. Patriots in both camps are fearful of its potentialities for harm.
There is grim recognition that the perils inherent in a divided Government are not limited to the home grounds. By far the biggest of those lurking perplexities is a spectre with a Mongol face and a Mongol thought-process. It is becoming ever clearer that this spectre will continue to haunt the American dream for a long time to come, that the November landslide did not exorcise the ghost and that the green hopes that sprouted in the emotional hot-bed of the campaign were not much better rooted than the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Plaza. In their place is growing a chill realisation that General Eisenhower has not, after all, discovered a cure for the cancer of Communism.
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