“God Bless Every One, Is Spirit of Butte Christmas.” So proclaimed a small headline in the Christmas Day edition of The Butte Miner.
Nature helped Butte deck for the feast on Christmas Eve “with a mantle of snow that obliterated its scars and blemishes like a veil. Temperatures several degrees warmer than the usual Christmas kind is again promised for today and although the frosty tingle of 10 below is an ordinary ingredient of the holiday’s weather, the crowds flocking to church, to the theater, to the rinks, and to places of amusement, will doubtless feel just as comfortable without it.”
School children were released from their scholastic obligations on December 23, following prepared holiday programs. And shoppers wore out the store clerks by shopping all week and making their purchases at the last minute on Christmas Eve.
Families in Butte preferred a traditional fir tree to an artificial tree to hold cherished ornaments. Fire Chief Fred Martin advised them to “avoid the use of candles, cotton and all inflammable decorations, amateur electrical wiring on trees, and insecure settings for the gift-laden firs.”
Having just come out of the First World War and the following recession, and a two-year epidemic of flu, Butte was looking forward to a peaceful and healthy new year. “It will be a quieter Christmas, but perhaps a happier one than the city has had for several years. It will be one brightened with the hope of better days to come in the not far distant future and cheered with the knowledge that the troublous times of the past are over, never to be repeated…”
I dare say, the people of Butte share those same sentiments one hundred years later.
~Kim
Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives 