Christmas shopping can be fun and productive nowadays.  The stores are crammed full of gift items ideally suited to any wish list.

All you need to carry them home and pile them high under the Christmas tree is a valid credit card, a bank checking account or a wallet filled with cash.

With that thought in mind, I wondered what it would’ve been like to go Christmas shopping during the World War II years, when so many consumer products that are in plentiful supply today were either rationed or didn’t exist.

As a child during that era, I well remember that most of the toys and games I had on my Christmas list were crossed out because they were either in such short supply or were no longer being made.

A visit to the December 1943 editions of the Hartselle Enquirer was all I needed to confirm my recollection of how bare the store shelves were back then.

If you Christmas shopped in Hartselle at that time, here’s a sample of what you had to choose from:

•Kids that had a new bike at the top of their wish list had little chance of getting one. They were rationed by local war price and rationing boards. The quota for Alabama’s 67 counties was 715.

•Shoppers had a good shot at finding toys made from wood. J.H. Corsbie Hardware & Furniture Company was advertising wooden wagons for $0.98, wooden machine guns for $1.95, wooden doll beds for $2.98 and wooden rocking horses for $3.95.

• Troy L. Nunn Jewelry had answers for the sweetheart or wife’s wish list. Gold-filled lockets were being advertised for $6.95 and you could buy her a gold- mounted diamond solitaire ring for $10.50.

• For the home, Sterchi’s was offering occasional chairs for $4.77 each, 9×12 rugs for $4.95 each and high back rockers for $9.95 each.

•Strand Theater offered a free Christmas Eve movie in return for a donation of fresh canned or died fruits. The food was being collected for the Morgan County Tuberculosis Sanitorium at Flint City.

•To keep the home filled with Christmas music, Corsbie Hardware advertised 1,000-hour radio batteries.

Looking back on that Christmas reminds me that the season is more about Jesus Christ – the greatest gift of all – than it is about material things.  Christians then as today find peace, joy and comfort in their worship of the one and only God, regardless of the value and number of gifts that lie under their Christmas tree.

Clif Knight is a staff writer for the Hartselle Enquirer.