Look Back ... to a joyous Christmas in Anniston, 1947
Dec. 25—Dec. 25, 1947, in The Star: Christmas came to Anniston last night amidst the play of the chimes at St. Michael and All Angels and this morning every corner of the city was alive with the spirit of the day. That would be excepting downtown, where stores were locked and empty, the owners and proprietors satisfied with one of the best peacetime Christmas shopping seasons ever experienced in Anniston. The 24 prisoners at the Anniston city jail and the 16 prisoners at the Calhoun County jail were not forgotten, with a full-course Christmas meal complete with dessert — ice cream at the city jail, ambrosia and cake at the county lockup. Not quite as confined, the 62 patients at Anniston Memorial Hospital were cheered with flowers, Christmas trees and presents. Also this date: A group called the American Heritage Foundation is sponsoring a seven-car train excursion around the nation wherein the compartments contain many of the nation's historic documents arranged for viewing by the public in the cities where the train stops. Those documents include the original draft of the Declaration of Independence all the way up to the original UN Charter. One of the train's 300 stops was going to be Birmingham, but now that stop has been cancelled. That's because Birmingham city leaders, including Police Commissioner Eugene Connor, insisted that the lines to see the freedom documents be racially segregated, without exception, according to local law, and the foundation could not assent to that. A similar cancellation has occurred in Memphis. [It was noted in the Sept. 28, 1947, Star that a young man of Anniston, now a Marine, Sgt. George Wood, would be one of 24 Marines accompanying the priceless treasures of U.S. history in their journey around the nation.]
Dec. 25, 1997, in The Star: There was a holiday meal to feed hundreds, but only a relative handful of Anniston's hungry showed up. Drawing on their experience of hosting what was thought to have been a successful Thanksgiving dinner, the youth of Hill Crest Baptist Church figured a Christmas feast would also draw a large crowd. It didn't. Maybe 70 people showed up yesterday, Dec. 24, at the Anniston City Meeting Center, and volunteers ended up eating much of the food themselves. "We talked to a bunch of volunteer agencies and they all said we'd run out of food. They also said nobody had done anything like this before," associate pastor Tim Thomas said.
