Here’s a log­i­cal (but unplanned) fol­low up to our pre­vi­ous post that looked back at Christ­mas Eve dur­ing World War I.

Here we present a Christ­mas pro­pa­gan­da film that came out of Eng­land dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. Britain is under Ger­man siege. But it’s endur­ing the Blitz and keep­ing a stiff upper lip, and Christ­mas will go on … if only under­ground. Britain’s chil­dren won’t be cheat­ed out of this. This clip, which reminds us that, eco­nom­ic prob­lems aside, we have much to be thank­ful for, comes from the British Film Insti­tute Nation­al Archive on YouTube, which we’re now adding to our col­lec­tion: Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 80 Edu­ca­tion­al Video Col­lec­tions.

via Crooked Tim­ber

Not long after Studs Terkel, the his­to­ri­an of the every­man, died in Octo­ber, This Amer­i­can Life fea­tured a series of inter­views that Terkel once con­duct­ed with Amer­i­cans who lived through the Depres­sion. (Lis­ten to the mp3 here.) The tapes would even­tu­al­ly pro­vide the mate­r­i­al for his book, Hard Times: An Oral His­to­ry of the Great Depres­sion. And, as you’ll see, these record­ings make this trans­for­ma­tion­al moment real in a way that few oth­er his­tor­i­cal sources can. You’ll hear the voic­es of real peo­ple, recount­ing their dai­ly expe­ri­ences and remem­ber­ing the race and class divi­sions that ran deep in Amer­i­ca. You’ll also hear about the humil­i­a­tions and acts of kind­ness that were part of every­day life. (NOTE: The inter­views start about 6 min­utes into the record­ing.)

You can access more of Terkel’s audio record­ings over at the web site, www.studsterkel.org. The site notably fea­tures more inter­views from the Hard Times record­ing ses­sions.

Thanks Robin for send­ing these clips our way.

Sub­scribe to our feed