WHEN YOU HAVE to work on CHRISTMAS, you take your joy where you can find it. It’s a light news day, so there’s time to decorate a little tree. You can watch the teletype machines for the elaborate greetings made up of lines of characters arranged to form a holiday picture or message from the wire-service guys in other cities who are working too. And even if you wind up going out in the cold to cover a fire, you know your colleagues will save you some cake. Maybe.
– Number of drunks you could expect to be hauled into the only city court open on Christmas, according to a Tribune reporter in 1950: 15.
– Percentage of U.S. workers who get paid holidays off: 77.
– Percentage of employers who sponsored holiday celebrations last year: 95. Percentage who planned to do so this year: 87.
– – –
“Holiday or no, the world goes on.”
–NOVELIST JAMES MICHAEL ULLMAN, WRITING IN THE DEC. 1, 1963, TRIBUNE
Sources: Tribune archives, news reports, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Photo from Tribune archives.
———-
nwatkins@tribune.com
