The 1918 Christmas in Muncie
100 years ago on Christmas Day, the mood in Delaware County was both joyous and apprehensive. The First World War ended a few weeks before and soldiers began returning home from European trenches. Their friends and family met them with open arms, but also anxiety as the Spanish Flu pandemic raged across the globe.
Both issues came together for the Wright family of Muncie. Milton Wright, a private in the American Expeditionary Forces, had been severely wounded just before the Armistice. A telegram indicating as such arrived at a grieving Wright house in Muncie on Christmas Eve in 1918. Milton’s mother Harriet had died on December 2 and his brother Thomas Franklin passed on December 9, both victims of the Spanish Flu.
Although definitive numbers do not exist, the pandemic wasn’t as severe in Delaware County as it was elsewhere. On Christmas Day, Dr. N. D. Berry, Muncie’s secretary of the board of health, reported to the Muncie Morning Star that 22 patients were undergoing treatment for the flu at a special hospital.
The news, however, wasn’t all bad that Christmas. Private Coleman Davis, one of Delaware County’s 150 African American soldiers fighting in the war, wrote home to his parents, “By the time you get this, I will be on my way home. I have just finished a two week tour in Europe on leave. Just came down from the Alps and am feeling fine.” I’m guessing the Alps kept calling, because Private Davis didn’t make it home until the following July.
Muncie’s theaters greeted returning soldiers that Christmas with free movies. The Strand and Liberty welcomed “our boys in uniform…this Christmas afternoon and evening at no cost.” The Star and Columbia followed suit, “Not only are we proud of you, not only do we wish you a Merry Christmas, but we wish to help make your visit pleasant…you are welcome to our entertainment free of admission.”
Just like in 2018, movie theaters opened on Christmas afternoon in 1918 to decent crowds. The Strand was running “Hitting the Trail,” starring Carlyle Blackwell and Evelyn Greely. The Liberty ran a double feature, “The Two Orphans” and Charlie Chaplin’s “Triple Trouble.” The Columbia (today the Mark III) ran the western “Selfish Yates,” while the Star (now Muncie Civic) had two evening performances of the vaudeville show “A Night in Panama.”
At the Wysor Grand, Christmas movie goers could screen D.W. Griffith’s sprawling propaganda film, “Hearts of the World” at either 2:05 PM, or 8:05 PM. These silent films were never, of course, actually silent for the audience. The Wysor Grand, for instance, advertised Griffith’s film as being accompanied by a “large symphony orchestra.” Nothing says Christmas quite like a little war propaganda scored live by a full ensemble.
In the business world, Muncie industrialists honored their employees with special bonuses to celebrate the holiday. The Ball Brothers’ Glass Manufacturing Company paid each employee a bonus worth a week’s pay. At Warner Gear, workers were given an extra day’s wages, while Merchants National Bank distributed $1,200 to their employees.
Most Delaware County merchants reported that they “ended their holiday season ahead of the record of last year and far ahead of previous years.” One merchant told a reporter, that the “people are making good wages” and “there will be plenty of employment as soon as the commercial world has readjusted itself.”
The Buehler Brothers advertised liver for .03/pound, G.W. Gates and Company was offering silk petticoats for $3.95, while the Muncie Stone & Lime Company sold “good lump coal” for $6/ton, just in case Santa didn’t bring enough.
If one didn’t feel like cooking that Christmas, the Kirby Hotel offered a lavish holiday feast of oyster stew, baked white fish, roast young turkey with oyster dressing, prime rib, snowflake potatoes, apple pie, pumpkin pie, figs, and cranberry punch.
The Muncie Evening Press reported on Christmas that the county raked in $604,684.78 in taxes during the last two quarters of 1918. About $218,000 went to roads and bridges, approximately $193,000 went to schools, and the rest was allocated elsewhere.
Finally, the city’s courts were open on Christmas Day for reasons I don’t understand. Judge William McClellan fined Frank Harvey $5 for public intoxication and Leonard Pigues $50 for returning home from Lima, Ohio with “six quarts of whiskey and two quarts of gin” in violation of Indiana’s Prohibition Act (signed in 1917).
I wonder how historians will write about Christmas 2020 a hundred years from now. To the future Delaware County historians of 2120 (and also you readers in 2020), I wish you all a very merry Christmas and the happiest of New Year’s
