On the one hand, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” is in the category of cloying sentimentality that I generally despise.
On the other hand ... having more than once been in the position of wanting very much to be “home for Christmas” and being kept very far from home due to forces greater than myself ... I can feel it.
The song was published in 1943 ... as you may recall there was a bit of a brouhaha going on back then, and a lot of men could only dream of being home for Christmas.
The song was published in 1943 ... as you may recall there was a bit of a brouhaha going on back then, and a lot of men could only dream of being home for Christmas.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/world-war-2-christmas-photos
In 1943, Captain George Nabb Jr. of the 115th Infantry Regiment wrote a letter to his wife and young son, the National WWII Museum reports. “[I]t doesn’t seem like Xmas in the least,” he said, noting that they did, however, get the day off and a turkey dinner.
Nabb continued: “We all drank a toast just before dinner to our next Xmas in the U.S.A. I hope and pray we shall be there.”
Despite the hopes of Nabb and his fellow soldiers, it would be more than a year before many of them could return home for Christmas. Instead, they had to celebrate the holiday the best they could from the front lines.
The soldiers put up Christmas trees (this was true in both Europe and the Pacific, though the soldiers in the Pacific had to get creative), feasted on turkey dinners, and enjoyed Christmas care packages sent by loved ones at home.
“It was really the wrappings that I loved — the little personal touches of just your own,” Lieutenant Colonel James H. Polk wrote to his wife in 1944.