THE Christmas of 1938, this paper wrote on Tuesday, December 27, was black, white and green in succeeding phases. And of the intermediate shades, perhaps the most predominant was grey. “The thermometer jumped up and down in an ‘ecstasy’ of seasonal enthusiasm. Weather was at its most fickle, and there was no knowing what it would be up to next.”
A thick fog shrouded Glasgow and its suburbs on Christmas Eve, causing numerous accidents and cancelling many sports fixtures, although skaters took in their enthusiastic hundreds to frozen city ponds.
Frost and snow greeted Christmas morning. Skaters were again out in force, “stimulating an appetite for the Christmas dinner,” but the temperature began to rise, and a thaw gradually set in. At some point, newspaper photographers were alerted to an unusual spectacle in Newlands, on the south of the city: the icicles formed by a fountain in a garden. Some of them were 10ft high.
The thaw was complete by Boxing Day, the Herald wrote, “and in the outskirts of the city bright sunlight and a mild temperature offered compensation for the rigours of the weekend. Hazy conditions prevailed in the city, which had the quiet appearance normally associated with Christmas Day.” In the evening, however, crowds poured into theatres, cinemas and dance-halls.
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